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ORATION 



UELIVBUKD UCFORE THE 



City Council and Citizens of Boston. 



ONE HUNnREDI'll ANNIVERSAHY OK THE DECLARATION 
OF AMERICAN INDEPENDEXCE. 



<^ 



JULY 4, 1876, 



BY 

HON. ROBERT 0. WINTHROP, LL. D.. 

I'RESII>ENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS TI I S T O K I C A I, SOCIETY. 




^ S t It : 
PRINTED HY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL. 



M n O C C L X X V I . 



5" 



oratio:n" 



DELrV'ERED BEFORE TIIE 



City Council and Citizens of Boston, 



ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DECLARATION 
. OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, 



JULY 4, 1876, 



BY 

HON. EGBERT d^WINTHROP, LL. D., 

President of the M ass AcnusETTs Histouical Society. 




'■'Hvrx'-r'-^—' 



■^^ 




Boston: 

PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE CITY COUNCIL. 

JIDCCCLXXVI. 






^r.^ 



[Fifty Copies Quarto riuvATKLY ruiNTKi*.] 



lt««k««U h Cburchlll, Printcn, 30 Anb 8ue«u UmUh. 



CITY OF BOSTON 



In Common Council, July 6, 1876. 
Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council are due, 
and they are hereby tendered, to the Hon. Egbert C. Win- 
THROP for the very appropriate, interesting and eloquent 
oration delivered by him before the Municipal Authorities of 
this city, upon the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary 
of the Declaration of American Independence ; and that he 
be requested to furnish a copy of the same for publication. 

Sent up for concurrence. 

J. Q. A. BEACKETT, 

President. 

In Board of Aldermen, July 10, 1876. 

Concurred. 

JOHN T. CLAEK, 

Chairman. 

Approved July 11, 1876. 

SAMUEL C. COBB, 

Mayor. 



SEEVICES AT MUSIC HALL. 



The Oration was delivered in ]\Iusic Hall, which was 
appropriately decorated for the occasion. A large audience 
was present. After music by the Gei-mauia Band, the 
Mayor, the Hon. Samuel C. Cobb, addressed the audience 
in the following words : — 

" The audience will please give attention while prayer is 
offered by the Kev. Henry W. Foote." 

Kev. Henry "W. Foote, pastor of King's Chapel, then 
offered the following prayer : — 

PKAYER BY THE REV. MK. FOOTE. 

Lord God of our fathers, whose faithfuhiess and 
mercies are unto children's children, to such as re- 
member thy commandments to do them, Ave thank 
thee that we can come to thee in the name, and as 
discijjles, of onr Lord Jesus Christ. On this memorial 
day, as we rejoice before thee with grateful millions, 
we ask that the gladness of our comitry may be filled 
with thankfulness for thy mercies, and that thou wilt 
sanctify the proud memories and the glad hopes of 
this hour. We bless thee, O thou who art the God 
of nations and of men, that thou wast with our 
fathers in the days of old; that thou didst bring them 



6 SERVICES AT MUSIC HALL. 

liither across the trackless deep, the seed-grain of a 
great nation; that thou didst cast out the heathen 
before them to make room for the ^■ine of thy choos- 
ing, and that our hills are covered with its shadow 
and the boughs thereof are like the goodly cedar. 
We thank thee that thou wast with our fathers 
in the time of battle to strengthen their hearts 
through Aveary years of war, to strengthen theu' 
hands to smite mightj' kings, and to give them the 
sure fruits of peace. We bless thy name that thou 
wast with them in the spirit of wisdom and under- 
standing, to inspire their hearts with those great 
principles of liberty and justice which shine as stars 
to lead all nations to a better day ; and we bless thee 
that thou wast with them in the spirit of knowledge 
and of thy fear, to establish their work in a nation 
that should endure for centuries. We remember be- 
fore thee with thankfulness the great and heroic men 
whom thou didst raise up to be their leadei's in the 
time of war, their counsellors in the days of peace; 
we bless thee for their patience in adversity, their 
soberaess in triumi^h, thcii- wisdom, their pui'ity, 
their patriotism, their faith in thee; and we pray that, 
as thy servant shall speak to us of the mighty and 
endiu'ing work which they wrought, the memorial of 
tlieir viitucs may abide in our hearts, and the power 
of their example strengthen us daily to thy service 
and thy praise. We thank thee, O our guardian 



JULY 4, 1876. 7- 

God, that as a reunited people, this nation bows 
before thee in this memorable hour; that thou hast 
put away all feeling of bitterness from between us, 
and from the l!^orth and the South, the East and the 
West, we come up together into thy kingdom of 
peace and love. Bless, we pray thee, our mother- 
country and her Queen; remove all memories of 
ancient strife from our hearts, and grant that the ties 
of blood and of faith may bind us together through 
centuries to come. Rule thou in the hearts of our 
rulers in the spirit of loyalty and incorrupt faithful- 
ness, and grant that this people may be indeed a 
nation whose God is the Lord, built upon that right- 
eousness which alone can exalt a jjeople. Hear us, 
we pray thee; strengthen us in thy faith and love, 
and let thy kingdom come and thy will be done. 
We ask it as disciples of Jesus Christ, our Lord. 
Amen. 

At the conclusion of the prayer, the Gerniania Band 
played a selection, after which the Mayor introduced the 
reader of the Declaration of Independence, iu the following 
words : — 

Fellow-Citizexs, Ladies aot) Gextlemen, — 

On the 4th of July, 1776, a document was pub- 
lished in Philadelphia, solemnly proclaiming the birth 
of a nation. The passage of time has made that dec- 
laration good, and has placed that new-born nation 



8 SERVICES AT MUSIC HALL. 

on a pinnacle of greatness and power, making the 
date an era in the history of civil liberty and of the 
AvorkFs civilization. It is fit that that historic paper 
should be read on this Centennial Anniversary in all 
the assemblies of the people throughout the land. 

It will now be read here; and I regard it as a felic- 
itous circumstance that its momentous utterances 
should reach us to-day through the lips of one whose 
ancestor's name stands subscribed to it, and who 
represents, in name and blood, a succession of illus- 
trious men who, in the highest stations of honor and 
public service, have borne a conspicuous part in the 
national history and counsels, from the fli-st day to 
the last of the intervening century. 

I present to you Brooks Adams, Esq. 

Tlie Declaration of Independence was then read by Mr. 
Adams, after wbicli the Mayor spoke as follows : — * 

In casting about for one who might worthily grace 
this Centennial occasion by taking the chief part in its 
observance, we did not have to search long before 
coming to a name so identified with the high accom- 
lilishments of the scholar, the orator, and the states- 
man, that the bare mention of it was equivalent to an 
election. 

We have considered it a fortunate coincidence that 
the gentleman designated for this service, by the 



JULY 4, 187G. 9 

qualifications I have mentioned, bears the name of 
one who was conspicnoiis in the annals of Boston 
more than a century before the Declaration of In- 
dependence, — the name of one who presided with 
honor and dignity over the destinies of the infant city 
in the days when it was but a straggling village on 
the shore of this peninsula. 

We all know that neither the centiuy of our 
national existence, nor the two centuries and a half 
that have passed smce the settlement of Boston, 
have dinmied the lustre of that name and lineage. 

I present to you, fellow-citizens, the Honorable 
Robert C. Wixthrop. 

At the conclusion of the Mayor's remarks, the Hon. 
Robert C. Winthkop delivered the following oration. 

2 



I 



ORATION. 



Agadst and again, Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, 
in years gone by, considerations or circumstances of 
some sort, public or private, — I know not what, — 
have prevented my acceptance of most kind and 
flattering invitations to deliver the Oration in this 
my native city on the Fourth of Jul3\ On one of 
those occasions, long, long ago, I am said to have 
playfully replied to the Mayor of that period, that, 
if I lived to witness this Centennial Anniversary, 
I would not refuse any service which might be 
required of me. That pledge has been recalled by 
others, if not remembered by myself, and by the 
grace of God I am here to-day to fvilfil it. I have 
come at last in obedience to your call, to add ray 
name to the distinguished roll of those who have 
discharged this service in vmbroken succession since 
the year 1783, when the date of a glorious act of 
patriots was substituted for that of a dastardly deed 
of hirelings, — the 4th of July for the 5th of March, 
— as a day of annual celebration by the people of 
Boston. 

In rising to redeem the promise thus inconsider- 



I 



12 onATiox. 

ately given, I may be pardoned for not forgetting, 
at the outset, who presided over the Executive 
Council of Massachusetts Avhen the Declaration, 
which has just been read, was iirst formally and 
solemnly proclaimed to the people, from the balcony 
of yonder Old State House, on the 18th of July, 
177G;* and whose jii'ivilege it was, amid the shoutings 
of the assembled multitude, the ringing of the bells, 
the salutes of the surrounding forts, and the firing 
of thirteen volleys from thirteen successive divisions 
of the Continental regiments, draAvn up ''in corre- 
spondence with the number of the American States 
United," to invoke "Stability and Perpetuity to 
American Independence! God save our AnuMican 
States!" 

That invocation was not in vain. That wish, that 
prayer, has been graciously granted. We are here 
this day to thank (iod for it. We do thank God 
loi- it with all our jiearts, and ascribe to Ilim all the 
glory. And it would be unnatural if I did not feel 
a more than conunon satisfaction, that the privilege 
of giviug expression to your emotions of joy and 
gratitude, at this hour, should have been assigned 1i> 
the oldest living descendant of him by whom that 
invocation was uttered, and that ])rayer breathed uj) 
to Heaven. 

Aud 11", indeed, in addition to this, — as you, Mr. 
* James Bowdoin. 



JULY i, 187G. 13 

Mayor, so kindly iirged in originally inviting me, — 
the name I bear may serve in any sort as a link 
between the earliest settlement of ISTew England, two 
centuries and a half ago, and the grand cnlmination 
of that settlement in this Centennial Epoch of 
American Independence, all the less may I be at 
liberty to express anything of the compunction or 
regret, which I cannot but sincerely feel, that so 
responsible and difficult a task had not been imposed 
upon some more sufficient, or certainly upon some 
younger, man. 

Yet what can I say? "Wliat can any one say, here 
or elsewhere, to-day, which shall either satisfy the 
expectations of others, or meet his own sense of the 
demands of such an occasion? For myself, certainly, 
the longer I have contemplated it, — the more deeply 
I have reflected on it, — so much the more hopeless 
I have become of finding myself able to give any 
adequate expression to its full significance, its real 
sublimity and grandeur. A hundred-fold more than 
when John Adams wi-ote to his wife it would be so 
forever, it is an occasion for "shows, games, sports, 
guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end 
of the continent to the other." Ovations rather than 
orations, are the order of such a day as this. Emo- 
tions like those which ought to fill, and which do fill, 
all our hearts, call for the swelling tones of a 
multitude, the cheers of a mighty crowd, and refuse 



14 OKATION. 

to be uttered by any single Iniman voice. The 
strongest phrases seem feeble and powerless; the 
best residts of historical research have the dryness 
of chaff and husks, and the richest flowers of rheto- 
ric the drowsiness of "poppy or mandragora." in 
])resence of the simplest statement of the grand 
consummation we are here to celebrate: — A Cen- 
tury of Self-Government Completed! A hundred 
years of Free Kepublican Institutions realized and 
rounded out ! An era of Popuhu' Liberty, continued 
and prolonged from generation to generation, until 
to-day it assumes its full proportions, and asserts its 
rightful i)lace, among the Ages! 

It is a theme from which an Everett, a Choate, or 
even a AVebster, might have shrunk. But those 
voices, alas! were long ago hushed. It is a theme 
on which any one, li^-ing or dead, might have been 
glad to follow the precedent of those few incom- 
parable sentences at Gettysburg, on the lOtli of 
November, 1SG.'>, and ibrbcar from all attempt al 
extended discourse. It is not for me, howevei", to 
copy that unique original, — nor yet to shelter my- 
self under an example, which I shoidd iii yarn aspire 
to eipial. 

And, indeed. Fellow Citizens, some lurnial words 
nuist be spoken here to-day, — trite, familiar, com- 
monplace words, though thc}^ may be; — some words 
oJ' commemoration; some words of congratulation; 



JULY 4, 187G. 15 

some words of glory to God, and of acknowledgment 
to man; some grateful lookings back; some hopeful, 
trustful, lookings forward, — these, I am sensible, 
cannot be spared from our great assembly on this 
Centennial Day. You would not pardon me for 
omitting them. 

But where shall I begin? To what specific sub- 
ject shall I turn for refuge from the thousand 
thoughts which come crowding to one's mind and 
rushing to one's lips, all jealous of postponement, all 
clamoring for utterance before our Festival shall 
close, and before this Centennial sun shall set? 

The single, simple Act which has made the Fourth 
of July memorable for ever, — the mere scene of the 
Declaration, — would of itself and alone supply an 
ample subject for far more than the little hour which 
I may dare to occupy; and, though it has been 
described a hundred times before, in histories and 
addresses, and in countless magazines and journals, 
it imperatively demands something more than a 
cursory allusion here to-day, and challenges our 
attention as it never did before, and hardly ever can 
challenge it again. 

Go back with me, then, for a few moments at 
least, to that great year of our Lord, and that great 
day of American Liberty. Transport yourselves 
with me, in imagination, to Philadelphia. It will 
require but Uttle effort for any of us to do so, for all 



16 ORATION. 

oui' hearts are there already. Yes, we are all thei-e, 
— from the At hint ic to the Pacific, from the Lalvcs 
to the CtuH", — we ai-c all tlicix', at this higli noon of 
our Nation's birthday, in that beantifnl City of 
Brotherly Love, rejoicing- in all her brilliant displays, 
and partaking in the full enjoyment of all her pag- 
eantiy and pride. Certainly-, the birthplace and the 
burial-place of Franklin are in cordial sym2:)athy at 
this hour; and a common sentiment of congratulation 
and joy, leaping and vibrating from heart to heart, 
outstrips even the magic swiftness of magnetic wires. 
There are no chords of such elastic reach and such 
electric power as the heartstrings of a mighty Xation, 
touched and tuned, as all our heartstrings are to-day, 
to the sense of a common glory, — throbbing and 
thrilling with a common exultation. 

Go with me, then, I say, to Philadelphia ; — not to 
Philadelphia, indeed, as she is at this moment, with 
all her braveiy on, with all her beautiful garments 
around her, with all the graceful and generous con- 
tributions which so many other Cities and othei- 
States and other Kations have sent for her adorn- 
ment, — not forgetting those most gracefid, most 
welcome, most touching contributions, in view of the 
precise character of the occasion, from Old England 
herself; — but go with me to Philadelphia, as she was 
just a hundred years ago. Enter with me her noble 
Independence Hall, so happily restored and conse- 



. JULY 4, 187G. 17 

crated afresh as the Rvmnymede of our Nation ; and, 
as Ave enter it, let lis not forget to be grateful that no 
demands of public convenience or expediency have 
called for the demolition of that old State House of 
Pennsylvania. Observe and watch the movements, 
listen attentively to the words, look steadfastly at the 
countenances, of the men who compose the little 
Congress assembled there. Braver, wiser, nobler 
men have never been gathered and groujjed under a 
single roof, before or since, in any age, on any soil 
beneath the sun. What are they doing? What are 
they daring? Who are the}', thus to do, and thus to 
dare ? 

Single out with me, as you easily will at the first 
glance, by a presence and a stature not easily over- 
looked or mistaken, the young, ardent, accomplished 
Jefferson. He is only just thirty-three years of age. 
Charming in conversation, ready and full in council, 
he is " slow of tongue," like the great Lawgiver of 
the Israelites, for any public discussion or formal 
discourse. But he has brought with him the reputa- 
tion of wielding what John Adams well called " a 
masterly pen." And grandly has he justified that 
reputation. Grandly has he employed that pen 
already, in drafting a Paper which is at this moment 
lying on the table and awaiting its final signature 
and sanction. 

Thi'ee weeks before, indeed, — on the previous 7th 

3 



IS OKATIOK. 

of Juiic, — his own noble colleaji^ie, Richard Henry 
Lee, had moved tlie Kesolntion, whose adoption, on 
the 2d of dulv. had viitiially settled the wliole ques- 
tion. Nothing', certainly, more explicit or emphatic 
coidd have been wanted for that Congress itself than 
that Resolution, setting forth as it did, in langiuige 
of striking simplicity and brevity and dignity, " That 
these United Colonies are, and of right ought to 
be. Free and Independent States; that they are 
absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and 
that all political connection between them and the 
State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally 
dissolved." ■ 

That Resolution was, indeed, not only comprehen- 
sive and conclusive enough for the Congress Avhich 
adopted it, but, I need not say, it is comprehensive 
and conclusive enough for us; and I heartily wish, 
that, in the century to come, its reading might be sub- 
stituted for that of the longer Declaration Avhich has 
I)ut the patience of our audiences to so severe a test 
for so many years past, — though, happily, not to-day. 

But the form in which that Resolution was to be 
announced and j)roclaimed to the people of the 
Colonies, and the reasons by which it was to be 
justitied before thcAvorld, were at that time of intense 
interest and of momentous importance. Xo graver 
respcmsibility was ever devolved ui)ou a young man 
of thirty-three, if. indeed, upon any man oi any age, 



JULY 4, ]S7fi. 19 

than that of pre^iaring such a Paper. As often as I 
have examhied the original draft of that Paper, still 
extant in the Archives of the State Department 
at Washington, and have observed how very few 
changes were made, or even suggested, by the illus- 
triotas men associated Avith its author on the corn- 
mittee for its preparation, it has seemed to me to be 
as marvellous a composition, of its kind and for its 
purpose, as the annals of mankind can show. The 
earliest honors of this day, certainly, may well be 
paid, here and throughout the country, to the young 
Virginian of " the masterly pen." 

And here, by the favor of a highly valued friend 
and fellow-citizen, to whom it was given by Jefferson 
himself a few months only before his death, I am 
privileged to hold in my hands, and to lift up to the 
eager gaze of you all, a most compact and convenient 
little mahogany case, which bears this autogi'aph 
inscription on its face, dated "Monticello, November 
18,1825:" — 

"Thomas Jefferson gives this Writing Desk to 
Joseph Coolidge, Jnn""., as a memorial of liis affection. 
It was made from a drawing of his own, by Ben 
Randall, Cabinet-maker of Philadelphia, with whom 
he first lodged on his arrival in that City in May, 
1776, and is the identical one on which he wrote the 
Declaration of Independence." 

"Politics, as well as Religion," the inscription pro- 



20 OKATIOX. 

ceecls to say, "has its superstitions. These, gaining 
strength witli lime, may. one day, give hnaginary 
vakie to this relic, for its association with tlie l)irth of 
the Great Charter of our Independence." 

Superstitions! Imaginary value! Xot for an 
instant can we admit such ideas. The modesty of 
the Avriter has ])etraycd even ''the masterly pen." 
There is no imaginary value to this relic, and no 
superstition is re([uired to render it as precious and 
priceless a piece of wood, as the secular cabinets of 
the world have ever possessed, or ever claimed to 
possess. !N^o cabinet-maker on earth will have a more 
endui-ing name than this inscription has secured to 
" Ben Randall, of Philadelphia." Xo i)cn will have 
a wider oi- more lasting fame than his who wrote the 
inseri})ti«)n. The veiy tal)le at Runnymede, which 
some of us have seen, on wliich the Magna ( 'liarta of 



"o 



England is said to have been signed or sealed five 
centuries and a half before, — even were it authen- 
ticated l)y the gt'iuiine autographs of every one of 
those brave old Barons, Avith Stephen Langton at 
their head, — who extorted its grand pledges and 
promises from King John, — so soon to be violated, 
— could hardly exceed, could hardly equal, in interest 
and value, this little mahogany desk. What mo- 
iuentous issues for oni' eounti'v. and for mankind, 
wei'e loeki'd up in this narrow drawi'r, as night after 
night the rough notes ol" preparation for the Great 



. ' JULY 4, 187C. 21 

Paper were laid aside for the revision of the morning! 
To what anxions thoughts, to what careful study of 
words and phrases, to what cautious weighing of 
statements and arguments, to what deej) and almost 
overwhelming impressions of responsibility, it must 
have been a witness ! Long may it find its appro- 
priate and appreciating ownership in the successive 
generations of a family, in which the blood of Vir- 
ginia and Massachusetts is so auspiciously com- 
mingled! Should it, in the lapse of years, ever 
pass from the hands of those to Avhom it will be so 
precious an heirloom, it could only have its fit and 
final place among the choicest and most chei'ished 
treasures of the IN'ation, with whose Title Deeds of 
Independence it is so proudly associated! 

But the young Jefferson is not alone from Virginia, 
on the day we are celebrating, in the Hall which we 
have entered as imaginary spectators of the scene. 
His venerated friend and old legal precejitor, — 
George "VYythe, — is, indeed, temporarily absent from 
his side; and even Eiehard Henry Lee, the original 
mover of the measure, and upon whom it might have 
devolved to draw up the Declaration, has been called 
home by dangerous illness in his family, and is not 
there to help him. But " the gay, good-humored " 
Francis Lightfoot Lee, a younger brother, is there. 
Benjjynin Harrison, the father of our late President 
Harrison, is there, and has just reported the Decla- 



22 OUATION. 

ration from the Committee of the Whole, of Avhich 
he Avas Chairman. The "mild and philanthropic" 
Carter Braxton is there, in the place of the lamented 
Pe}i:on l\and(>li)h, the first President of the Con- 
tinental Congress, who had died, to the sorrow of 
the whole country, six or seven months before. And 
the noble-hearted Thomas Nelson is there, — the 
largest subscriber to the generous relief sent from 
A'irginia to Boston during the sore distress oc- 
casioned by the shutting up of our Port, and who Avas 
the mover of those Instructions in the Convention of 
Virginia, passed on the 15th of May, under Avhich 
Richai-d Henry Lee offered the original resolution of 
Independence, on the 7th of June. 

I am particular, Fellow Citizens, in giving to the 
Old Dominion tlie foremost place in this rapid survey 
of the Fourth of July, 177(5, and in naming every one 
of her delegates who participated hi that day's doings; 
for it is hardly too nuich to say, that the destinies of 
our country, at that ])eriod, hung and hinged upon 
her action, and upon the action of her great and 
glorious sons. Without A'irginia, as we must all 
acl\-nowledge, — Avithout her Patrick TTenry among 
the people, her l^ees and JelVerson in the forum, and 
lur Washington in the Held, — 1 will not say, that 
the cause of Ami'iican Jiibcrtv and American in- 
dependence must have bei'u ultimately defeased,— 
no, no; there was no ulthnate defeat for that cause in 



JULY 4, 187G. 23 

the decrees of the Most High! — but it must have 
been delayed, postponed, pei'plexed, and to many eyes 
and to many hearts rendered seemingly hopeless. It 
was Union which assured our Independence, and there 
could have been no Union without the influence and 
cooperation of that great leading Southern Colony. 
To-day, then, as we look back over the wide gulf of 
a century, we are ready and glad to forget every 
thing of alienation, every thing of contention and 
estrangement which has intervened, and to hail her 
once more, as our Fathers in Faneuil Hall hailed her, 
in 1775, as " our noble, patriotic sister Colony, 
Vu'ginia." 

I may not attempt, on this occasion, to speak with 
equal particularity of all the other delegates whom we 
see assembled in that immortal Congress. Their 
names are all inscribed where they can never be oblit- 
erated, never be forgotten. Yet some others of them 
so challenge our attention and rivet our gaze, as we 
look in upon that old time-honored Hall, that I cannot 
pass to other topics without a brief allusion to them. 

Who can overlook or mistake the sturdy front of 
Roger Sherman, whom we are proud to recall as a 
native of Massachusetts, though now a delegate from 
Connecticut, — that " Old Puritan," as John Adams 
well said, " as honest as an angel, and as firm in the 
cause of American Independence as Mount Atlas," — 
represented most worthily to-day by the distinguished 



24: ORATION. 

Orator of the Centennial at Philadelphia, as well as 
by move tlian one distinguished grandson in our own 
State? 

Who ean overlook or mistake the stalwart figure of 
Samuel Chase, of Maryland, " of ardent passions, of 
strong mind, of domineering temper, of a turbulent 
and boisterous life," who had helped to bui'n in efligy 
the Maryland Stamp Distributor eleven years before, 
and who, we are told by one who Imew what he was 
saying, " must ever be conspicuous in the catalogue 
of that Congress " ? 

His milder and more amiable colleague, Charles 
Carroll, was engaged at that moment in pressing the 
cause of Independence on the hesitating Convention 
of Maryland, at Annapolis; and though, as we shall 
see, he signed the Declaration on the 2d of ^Vugust, 
and outlived all his compeers on that roll of glory, he 
is missing froui the illustrious band as we look in 
upon them this morning. I cannot but remember 
lliat it was my privilege to see and know that vener- 
able person in my early manhood. Entering his 
drawing-room, nearly li\'e-and-forty years ago, I 
found him reposing on a sofa and covered with a 
shawl, and was not even aware of his presence, so 
shrunk and shi-i\elled by the lapse of years was his 
originally feeble frame, (^not Libras in duce summo! 
]Jut the little heap on the sofa was soon seen stirring, 
and, rousing himsell" from his mid-day nap, he rose 



JULY 4, 1876. 25 

and greeted me with a courtesy and grace which I 
can never forget. In the ninety-fifth jear of his age, 
as he was, and within a few months of his death, it is 
not surprising that there should be Uttle for me to 
recall of that interview, save his eager inquiries about 
■James Madison, whom I had just visited at Montpe- 
lier, and his affectionate allusions to John Adams, who 
had gone before him; and save, too, the exceeding 
satisfaction for myself of having seen and pressed the 
hand of the last surviving signer of the Declaration. 

But Caesar Rodney, who had gone home on the 
same patriotic errand which had called Carroll to 
Maryland, had happily returned in season, and had 
come in, two days before, "in his boots and spurs," 
to give the casting vote for Delaware in favor of 
Independence. 

And there is Arthur Middleton, of South Carolina, 
the bosom friend of our own Hancock, and who is 
associated with him under the same roof in those ele- 
gant hospitalities which helped to make men know 
and understand and trust each other. And Avith him 
you may see and almost hear the eloquent Edward 
Rutledge, who not long before had united with 
John Adams and Richard Henry Lee in urging on 
the several Colonies the great measure of establishing 
permanent governments at once for themselves, — a 
decisive step which we may not forget that South 
Carolina was among the very earliest in taking. She 



2G OEATION. 

took it, liowevcr, Avith a reservation, and her dele- 
gates were not quite ready to vote for Independence, 
when it was first proposed. 

But Richard Stockton, of XeAV Jersey, must not 
he unmarked or umnentioned in our rapid survey, 
more especially as it is a matter of record that his 
original doubts about the measure, which he is now 
bravely supporting, had been dissipated and dispelled 
"by the irresistible and conclusive arguments of 
John Adams." 

And who requires to be remmded that oiu- " (Jreat 
Bostonian," Benjamin Franklin, is at his post to-day, 
representing his adopted Colony with less sujjport 
than he could wish, — for Pennsylvania, as well as 
Xew York, was sadly divided, and at times almost 
paralyzed by her divisions, — but with patriotism and 
firmness and prudence and sagacity and pliilosophy 
and wit and common-sense and courage enough to 
constitute a whole delegation, and to represent a 
whole Colony, by himself ! lie is the last man of 
that Avhole glorious group of Fifty, — or it may have 
been one or two more, or one oi' two less, than fifty, 
— who requires to Ijc pointed out, in order to be the 
observed of all observers. 

But I must not stop hei'c. It is fit, above all other 
things, that, while we do justice to the great actors 
ill this scene from other Colonies, we should not 
overlook tlu' delegates from our own Colony. It is 



JULY. 4, 1870. 27 

fit, above all things, that we should recall something 
more than the names of the men who represented 
Massachusetts in that grejit Assembly, and Avho 
boldly affixed their signatures, in her behalf, to that 
immortal Instrument. 

Was there ever a more signal distinction vouch- 
safed to mortal man, than that which was won and 
worn by John Hancock a hundred years ago to-day? 
^N'ot altogether a great man; not Avithout some grave 
defects of character; — we remember nothing at this 
hoiu" save his Presidency of the Congress of the 
Declaration, and his bold and noble signature to our 
Magna Charta. Behold him in the chair which is 
still standing in its old place, — the very same chair 
in which Washington was to sit, eleven years later, 
as President of the Convention which framed the 
Constitution of the United States; the very same 
chair, emblazoned on the back of which Franklin was 
to descry "a rising, and not a setting sun," when 
that Constitution had been finally adopted, — behold 
him, the young Boston merchant, not yet quite forty 
years of age, not only -vvith a piincely fortune at 
stake, but with a price at that moment on his own 
head, sitting there to-day in all the calm comi)osure 
and dignity which so pecuharly characterized him, 
and which nothing seemed able to relax or ruffle. 
He had chanced to come on to the Congress during 
the previous year, just as Peyton Eandolph had been 



28 OKATIOX. 

compelled to relinqiiish his seat and go home, — return- 
ing only to die; and, liaving ])vrn unexpectedly elected 
as his successor, he hesitatetl about taking the seat. 
But grand old Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, we are 
told, was standing beside him, and with the ready 
good humor that loved a joke even in the Senate 
House, he seized the modest candidate in his athletic 
arms, and placed him in the presidential chair; then, 
tm-uing to some of the members around, he ex- 
claimed: "We will show Mother Britain how little 
we care for her, by making a jNIassachusetts man our 
President, whom she has excluded from pardon Ijy a 
public proclamation." 

Behold him! He has risen for a moment. He has 
put the question. The Declaration is adopted. It is 
already late in the evening, and all formal promulga- 
tion of the day's doings must be postponed. After a 
grace of three days, the air will lie vibi"ating with ihe 
joyous tones of the Old Bell in the cupola over his 
head, proclaiming Liberty to all mankind, and witli 
the res]>onding acclamations of assembled multitudes. 
Meantime, for him, however, a simple but soleuni 
duty ]-emains to be discharged. The paper is Ijelure 
him. ^'ou may see the very table on which it was 
laid, and the very inkstand Avhich awaits his use. 
No hesitation now. lie dips his jaen, and with an 
luilrembling hand proceeds to execute a signature, 
which would seem to have been studied in the 



JULY 4, 1876. 29 

schools, and practised in the connting-room, and 
shaped and modelled day by day in the correspond- 
ence of mercantile and political manhood, initil it 
should be meet for the authentication of some immor- 
tal act; and which, as Webster grandly said, has 
made his name as imperishable, "as if it Avere written 
between Orion and the Pleiades." 

Under that signature, with only the attestation of 
a secretary, the Declaration goes forth to the Ameri- 
can people, to be printed in their journals, to be 
proclaimed in their streets, to be i^ublished from their 
pulpits, to be read at the head of their armies, to be 
incorporated for ever in their history. The British 
forces, driven away from Boston, are now landing on 
Staten Island, and the reverses of Long Island are 
just awaiting us. They Avere met by the promulga- 
tion of this act of oflence and defiance to all royal 
authority. But there was no individual responsibility 
for that act, save in the signature of John Hancock, 
President, and Charles Thomson, Secretary. Not 
until the 2d of August was our young Boston mer- 
chant relieved from the perilous, the appalling gran- 
deur of standing sole sponsor for the revolt of 
Thirteen Colonies and Three Millions of people. 
Sixteen or seventeen years before, as a very young 
man, he had made a visit to London, and was present 
at the burial of George II., and at the coronation of 
George III. He is now not only the witness but the 



30 01?.\TI0N. 

iiisti'iiment. niul in soiiu' sovi the impersonation, of a 
far more sul)stantial cliang'e of dynasty on bis own 
soil, tlir liuiial of I'oyalty nnder any and I'very title, 
and the coronation of a Sovereign, Avhose sci'ptrc has 
already endured Ibr a century, and whose sway has 
already embraced three times thirteen States, and 
more than thirteen times three millions of ])eople! 

Ah, if his qnaint, pictnresqne, charming- old man- 
sion-house, so long the gem of Beacon street, could 
have stood till this day, our Centennial decorations 
and illuminations might haply have so marked, and 
sanctified, and glorified it, that the rage of recon- 
struction would have passed over it still longer, and 
spared it for the reverent gaze of other generations. 
But his own name and fame are secure; and, what- 
ever may have been the foibles or faults of his later 
years, to-day we will remember that momentous and 
matchless signature, and iiim who made it, with noth- 
ing but respect, admiration and gratitude. 

But Hancock, as I need not remind you, was not 
the only proscribed pati-iot \\lio i-epresented !Massa- 
chusetts at Philadelphia on the day we are connnem- 
orating. His associate in (Jeneral Gage's memoral)le 
exception from pardon is close at his side. lie who, 
as a Harvard College student, in 1743, had main- 
tained the afiirmative of the Thesis, "AVhethcr it be 
lawful lo resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Com- 
monwealth cannot otherwise be preserved," and who 



JULY 4, 1870. 31 

during those whole three-and-thirty years since had 
been training up himself and training up his fellow- 
countrymen in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord and of Liberty ; — he who had replied to Gage's 
recommendation to him to make his peace with the 
King, " I trust I have long since made my peace with 
the King of Kings, and no personal considerations 
shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of 
my country ; " — he who had drawn up the Boston 
Instructions to her Representatives in the General 
Court, adopted at Faneuil Hall, on the 2-ith of May, 
1764:, — the earliest protest against the Stamp Act, and 
one of the grandest papers of our whole Revolutionary 
period ; — he who had instituted and organized those 
Committees of Correspondence, without which we 
could have had no imited counsels, no concerted 
action, no union, no success ; — he who, after the 
massacre of March 5, 1770, had demanded so heroic- 
ally the removal from Boston of the British regi- 
ments, ever afterwards known as " Sam. Adams's 
regunents," — telling the Governor to his face, with 
an emphasis and an eloquence which were hardly 
ever exceeded since Demosthenes stood on the Bema, 
or Paul on Mars Hill, " If the Lieutenant-governor, or 
Colonel Dahymple, or both together, have authority 
to remove one regiment, they have authority to 
remove two; and nothing short of the total evacua- 
tion of the Town, by all the regular troops, will 



32 ORATION. 

satisfy the public mind or [)reserve llu' peace of tlie 
Pi'ovince;" — he, "the PaHmirus of the American 
Revolution," as Jetferson once called him. hut — 
lliaidv Heaven! — a Palinurus who was never put to 
sleep at the helm, never thrown into the sea, but who 
is still watching the compass and the stars, and steer- 
ing the ship as she enters at last the haven he has so 
long yearned for: — the veteran Samuel Adams, — 
the disinterested, indexible, incorruptible statesman, 
— is second to no one in that whole Congress, hardly 
second to any one in the whole thirteen Colonies, in 
his claim to the honors and grateful acknowledg- 
mi-nts of this hour. We have just gladly hailed his 
statue on its way to the capitol. 

Nor must the name of llobert Treat Paine be 
forgotten among the five delegates of Massachusetts 
in that Hall of Independence, a hundred years ago 
to-day; — an able lawyer, a learned judge, a just 
man; connected by marriage, if I mistake not, Mr. 
Mayor, with youi- own gallant grandfather. General 
Cobb, and who liimselC inherited tlu' blood and illus- 
trated the virtut's of the hero and statesman Avhose 
name he bore, — Jvobert Treat, a most distinguished 
officer in King Philip's War. and afterwards a worthy 
Govci'nor of Ccmnecticnt. 

And with him, too, is Plbridge Gerry, the very 
youngest member of the whole Continental Congress, 
just thirty-two years of age, — who had been one of 



JULY 4, l,S7(i. 33 

the cliosen friends of our proto-martyr, Cleneral 
Joseph Wan-en; who Avas with Warren, at Water- 
town, the very hist night before he fell at Bunker 
Hill, and into whose ear that heroic volunteer had 
wdiispered those memorable words of presentiment, 
" Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori ; " who lived 
himself to serve his Commonwealth and the ^N^ation, 
ardently and efficiently, at home and abroad, ever in 
accordance with his own patriotic injunction, — "It 
is the duty of eveiy citizen, though he may have but 
one day to live, to devote that day to the service of 
his country," — and died on his way to his post as 
Yice-President of the United States. 

One more name is still to be pronounced. One 
more star of that little Massachusetts cluster is still 
to be observed and noted. And it is one, which, on 
the precise occasion we commemorate, — one, which 
during those great days of June and July, 1776, on 
which the question of Independence was immediately 
discussed and decided, — -had hardly "a fellow m the 
firmament," and Avhich was certainly " the bright, 
particular star " of our own constellation. You will 
all have anticipated me in naming John Adams. 
Beyond all doubt, his is the Massachusetts name 
most prominently associated with the immediate Day 
we celebrate. 

Others may have been earlier or more active than 
he in preparing the way. Others may have labored 



34 "■ OHATION. 

longer and moiv zealously to instruct the })0]Hilar 
mind and inflame the i)oi)ulai' heart I'oi- tlie great steji 
Avliirh was now to be taken. Otiiei's may have been 
more ardent, as they un(|uestiona]jly were more 
prominent, in the various stages of the struggle 
against \\'rits of Assistance, and Stanij) Acts, and 
Tea Taxes. But from the date of that marvellous 
letter ol' his to Xathan Webb, in 1755, when he was 
less than twenty years old, he seems to have forecast 
the destinies of this continent as few other men of 
any age, at that day, had done; while from the 
moment at which the Continental Congress took the 
question of Independence fairly in hand, as a ([uestion 
to be decided and acted on, until they had bi'ought it 
to its final issue in the Declaraliun, his was the voice, 
abuve and belbre all other Noices, Avliich connnanded 
the ears, convinced the minds, and inspired the hearts 
of his colleagues, and ti-iunipliantly seeurt'd the 
result. 

I need not sj)eak of him in other relaticms or in 
after years. His long life of varied and noble service 
to his c-onntiy. in almost every sphere of public duty, 
domestic and foreign, belongs to history; and history 
has long ago taken it in charge, lint the testimony 
which was l)orne to his grand ellbrts and utterances, 
l)v the antiior ol' the Declaration himself, can never 
be gainsaid, never be Aveakened, never be forgotten. 
That testimony, old as it is, familiar as it is, belongs 



JULY 4, 1876. 35 

to tins day. John Adams will be remembered and 
honored for ever, in every true American heart, as 
the acknowledged Champion of Independence in the 
Continental Congress, — " coming- out with a power 
which moved us from our seats," — " our Colossus on 
the floor." 

And when we recall the circumstances of his 
death, — the year, the day, the hour, — and the last 
words upon his dying lips, " Independence for ever," 
— who can help feeling that there was some myste- 
rious tie holding back his heroic spirit from the skies, 
until it should be set free amid the exultiug shouts of 
his country's first ]S"ational Juljilee ! 

But not his heroic spirit alone ! 

In this rapid survey of the men assembled at 
Philadelphia a hundred years ago to-day, I began 
with Thomas Jefferson, of Yirginia, and I end with 
John Adams, of Massachusetts; and no one can 
hesitate to admit that, under God, they were the very 
alpha and omega of that day's doings, — the pen and 
the tongue, — the masterly author, and the no less 
masterly advocate, of the Declaration. 

And now, my friends, Avhat legend of ancient 
Eome, or Greece, or Egypt, what myth of prehistoric 
mythology, what story of Ilei-odotus, or fiible of 
^sop, or metamorphosis of Ovid, would have seemed 
more fabulous and mythical, — did it rest on any 
remote or doubtful tradition, and had not so many of 



86 ORATION. 

lis lived to be startled. :uid thrilled and awed 1)y it, — 
than till' faet, that these two men, nnder so manv 
difierent cireumstances and surroundings, of age and 
constitution and elimate, widely distant from eaeh 
other, living alike in quiet neighborhoods, remote 
from the smoke and stir of cities, and long before 
raih-oads or telegi-aphs had made any advances 
towards the annihilation or abridgment of space, 
should have jjeen released to their rest and sum- 
moned to the skies, not only on the same day, but 
that day the Fourth of July, and that Fonrth of Jnl}^ 
the Fiftieth Anniversary of that great Declaration 
which thev had contended for and carried tluduuh 
SO triumphantly side by side! 

"What an added emphasis Jefferson Avould have 
given to his inscrijjtion on this little desk, — "Poli- 
tics, as well as Keligion, has its superstitions," — 
could he have foresei'u the close even of his own life, 
niucli moiv the simultaneons close of these two lives, 
on that Day of Days! Oli, let mv not admit the idea 
of superstition! Let me rather revei'ently say, as 
Webster said at the time, in that magnificent Eulogy 
which left so little for any one else to say as to the 
lives or deaths of Adams and Jefferson: "As their 
lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is 
not willing to recognize in their ha])py termination, 
as wvW as in tluir long continuance, ])rools thai our 
counlry and its beneltictors are objects of His care?" 



JULY 4, 187(!. 37 

And now another Fifty Years have passed away, . 
andw^e are holding our high Centennial Festival; and 
still that most striking, most impressive, most memo- 
rable coincidence in all American history, or even in 
the authentic records of mankind, is withoixt a visible 
monument anywhere ! 

In the interesting little city of Weimar, renowned 
as the resort and residence of more than one of the 
greatest philosophers and poets of Germany, many a 
traveller must have seen and admired the charming 
statues of Goethe and Schiller, standing side by side 
and hand in hand, on a single pedestal, and offering, 
as it were, the laurel wreath of literary priority or 
pre-eminence to each other. Few noljler works of 
art, in conception or execution, can be found on the 
Continent of Europe. And what could be a worthier 
or juster commemoration of the marvellous coinci- 
dence of which I have just spoken, and of the men 
who were the subjects of it, and of the Declaration 
with which, alike in their lives and in their deaths, 
they are so peculiarly and so signally associated, 
than just such a Monument, with the statues of 
Adams and Jefferson, side by side and hand in hand, 
upon the same base, pressing upon each other, in 
mutual acknowledgment and deference, the victor 
palm of a triumph foi- which they must ever be held 
in common and equal honor! It Avould be a new tic 
between Massachusetts and Virginia. It would be a 



38 () HAT I ON. 

new 1)ond of that Union Avhicli is tlio safety and tlie 
gloiy of bdfli. It would 1)0 a new pledge of that 
restored good-will between the North and South, 
Avhich is the luM-ald and harbinger of a Second Cen- 
tury of National Independence. It Avould be a tit 
recognition of the great Hand of God in our liistory! 
At fill events, it is one of the crying omissions 
and neglects which I'cproach us all this day, that 
"glorious old John Adams" is without any ])ropor- 
tionate pi;blic monument in the State of which he was 
one of the very grandest citizens antl sons, and in 
whose behalf he rendered such inestimable services to 
his country. It is almost ludicrous to look around 
and see who has been commemorated, and he neg- 
lected! He might be seen standing alone, as he 
kncAV so well how to stand alone in life, lie might 
be seen grouped with his illustrious son, only second 
to himself in his claims on the omitted posthumous 
honors of his native State. Or, if the claim of noble 
women to such connnemorations were ever to be 
recognized on oiu- soil, he might be lovingly grouped 
with that incomparable wife, from Avhom he was so 
often separated by jniblic duties and j)ersonal dangers, 
and Avhose familiar correspondence Avith him, and his 
with lier. fui'uishes a picture of iidelity and alfection, 
and of patriotic zeal and courage and self-sacrilice, 
almost Avithout a parallel in our Kevolulionary 
jVnnals. 



.JULY 4, l»7i;. 31) 

But befoi'e all other statues, let us have those of 
Adams and Jefferson on a single block, as they stood 
together just a hundred years ago to-day, — as they 
were translated together just fifty years ago to-day : 
— foremost for Independence in their lives, and in 
their deaths not divided! ^N^ext, certainly, to the 
completion of the IS^ational Monument to Washington, 
at the capital, this double statue of this "double 
star " of the Declaration calls for the contributions of 
a patriotic peo^ile. It woidd have something of 
special appropriateness as the tirst gift to that Boston 
Park, which is to date from this Centennial Period. 

1* 
I have felt, Mr. Mayor and Fellow Citizens, as I 

am sure you all must feel, that the men who were 
gathered at Philadelphia a hundred years ago to-day, 
familiar as their names and their story may be, to 
ourselves and to all the world, had an imperative 
claim to the first and highest honors of this Centen- 
nial Anniversary. But, having paid these passing- 
tributes to their memory, I hasten to turn to consid- 
erations less purely personal. 

The Declaration has been adopted, and has been 
sent forth in a himdred journals, and on a thousand 
broadsides, to every camp and council chamber, to 
every town and village and hamlet and fireside, 
throughout the Colonies. What was it? What did 
it declare? What was its rightful interpretation 



4:0 < 1 1! A T I O X . 

and intention? lender -vvliat circumstances was it 
adopted? A^'llat did it accomplish for om-selves and 
for mankind? 

A recent and powerful writer on " The Cirowth of 
the English Constitution," whom I had the pleasiu-e 
of meeting at the Commencement of Old Cambridge 
University two years ago, says most strikingly and 
most justly: "There are certain great political docu- 
ments, each of which forms a landmark in our politi- 
cal history. There is the Great Charter, the Petition 
of Rights, the Bill of Rights." "But not one of 
them," he adds, " gave itself out as the enactment of 
any thing new. All claimed to set forth, with new 
strength, it might he, and with new clearness, those 
rights of Englishmen, Avhich were already old." The 
same remark has moi'e recently been incorporated 
into " A Short History of the English People." " In 
itself," says the writer of that admirable little volume, 
"the Chart (!r was no novelty, nor did it claim to 
establish any new Constitutional |H'iuci[)les. The 
Charter of Henry I. formed the basis of the Avhole; 
and the additions to it ai'e, for the most part, formal 
recognitions of the judicial and administrative changes 
introduced by Henry II." 

So, substantially, — so, almost jji-ecisely, — it may 
be said of the Great American Charter, Avhich was 
drawn u[) l)y Thomas Jefferson on the jjrccious little 
desk which lies before me. It nintlc no pretensions 



JULY 4, 18TC. 41 

to novelty. The men of 177G were not in any sense, 
certainly not in any seditious sense, greedy of novel- 
ties, — "avidi novarum rerum.'^ They had claimed 
nothing new. They desired nothing new. Their old 
original rights as Englishmen were all that they 
sought to enjoy, and those they resolved to vindicate. 
It was the invasion and denial of those old rights of 
Englishmen, which they resisted and I'evolted from. 

As our excellent fellow-citizen, Mr. Dana, so well 
said publicly at Lexington, last year, — and as we 
should all have been glad to have him in the way of 
repeating quietly in London, this year, — " We were 
not the Kevolutionists. The King and Parliament 
were the Revolutionists. They were the radical 
innovators. We were the conservators of existing 
institutions." 

No one has forgotten, or can ever forget, how 
early and how emphatically all this was admitted by 
some of the grandest statesmen and orators of 
England herself. It was the attempt to subvert our 
rights as Englishmen, which roused Chatham to some 
of his most majestic efforts. It was the attempt to 
subvert our rights as Englishmen, which kindled 
Burke to not a few of his most brilliant utterances. 
It was the attempt to subvert our rights as English- 
men, which inspired Barre and Conway and Camden 
with appeals and arguments and phrases, which will 
keep their memories fresh when all else associated 



42 UUATION. 

Avitli them is forgotten. The names of all tlii-ie ol' 
them, as you well know, have long been the cherished 
designations of American Towns. 

They all perceived and understood that we were 
contending for English i-ights, and against the viola- 
tion of the great principles of English liberty. Xay, 
not a few of them perceived and understood that we 
were fighting their battles as well as our ow n, and 
that the liberties of Englishmen upon their own soil 
were virtually involved in our cause and in our 
contest. 

There is a most notable letter of Josiah Quincy, 
Jr.'s, Avritlen from London at the end of 1774, — a 
few months only before that young patriot returned 
to die so sadly within sight of his native shores, — in 
which he tells his wife, to whom he was not likely to 
write for any mere sensational effect, that ''some of 
the first characters for understanding, integrity, and 
spirit," whom he had met in London, had used lan- 
guage of this sort: "This Xation is lost. Corruption 
and the influence of the Crown have led us into 
])ondage, and a Standing Army has riveted our 
chains. To America only can we look for salvation. 
'Tis America only can save England. Unite and 
jwrsevere. You must prevail — you nuist triumpli." 
Quincy was careful not to betray names, in a letter 
which might be interce])ted before it reached its 
destination. But we know the men with whom he 



JULY 4, 18 71;. 



43 



had been brought into association by FrankUn and 
other friends, — men like Shelbnrne and Hartley 
and Pownall and Priestley and Brand Hollis and Sir 
George Saville, to say nothing of Bui-ke and Chat- 
ham. The language was not lost upon us. We did 
unite and persevere. We did prevail and triumph. 
And it is hardly too much to say that we did " save 
England." We saved her from herself; — saved her 
from being the successful instrument of overthrowing 
the rights of Englishmen; — saved her "from the 
poisoned chalice which would have been commended 
to her own lips;" — saved her from "the bloody 
instructions which would have returned to plague the 
inventor." Kot only was it true, as Lord Macaulay 
said in one of his briUiant Essays, that "England 
was never so rich, so great, so fonnidable to foreign 
princes, so absolutely mistress of the seas, as since 
the alienation of her American Colonies ; " but it is 
not less true that England came out of that contest 
with new and larger views of Liberty; with a 
broader and deeper sense of what was due to human 
rights ; and with an experience of incalculable value 
to her in the management of the vast Colonial Sys- 
tem which remained, or was in store, for her. 

A vast and gigantic Colonial System, beyond 
doubt, it has proved to be! She was just entenng, a 
hundred years ago, on that wonderful career of con- 
quest in the East, which was to compensate her, — 



44 OKATIOX. 

if it were a coin])piisation, — for lu-r ini])eiuling losses 
in the West. Her gallant Coi-nwallis was soon to 
receive the jewelled sword of Ti])poo Saib at Ban- 
galore, in exchange for that which he was now des- 
tined to surrendei- to AN'ashington at YorktoAvn. It 
is ccrtainl}' not among the least striking coincidences 
of onr Centennial Year, that, at the verv moment 
when we arc celebrating the event which stripped 
Great Britain of thirteen Colonies and three millions 
of subjects, — now grown into tliirtv-eight States and 
more tliaii Inrty millions of people, — she is Avelcom- 
ing the return of hei' amiable and genial Prince from 
a royal progress throngli the wide-spread regions of 
" Ormus and of Ind," bringing back, to lay at the 
foot of the British throne, the homage of nint' prin- 
cii)al Brovinces and a hundred and fortA'-eight 
feudatory States, and of not less than two hundred 
and foi'ty millions of people, from Ceylon to the 
Himalayas, and aft'oi'ding ample justification for the 
Qneen's new title of Empress of India! Among all 
the parallelisms of modern history', there are few 
more striking and impressive than this. 

Tile Aniei-ican Cohmies never (piarrelled or cav- 
illed about the titles of their Sovereign. If, as has 
been said, ''they went to war about a preamble,'' it 
was not about the preamble of the royal name. It 
was the Inipi'rial powi'r, the more than Imperial pre- 
tensions and usurpations, which drove them to 



JULY 4, 1S7G. 45 

rebellion. The Declaration was, in its own terms, a 
personal and most stringent arraignment of the 
King. It could have been nothing else. George 
III. was to us the sole responsible instrument of 
oppression. Parliament had, indeed, sustained him; 
but the Colonies had never admitted the authority of 
a Parliament in which they had no representation. 
There is no passage in Mr. Jeflerson's paper more 
carefully or more felicitously worded, than that in 
which he says of the Sovereign, that " he has com- 
bined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction for- 
eign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by 
our laws, — giving his assent to tlwir acts of j)re- 
iended legislation.'''' A slip of "the masterly pen" 
on this point might have cost us our consistency; 
but that pen Avas on its guard, and this is the only 
allusion to Lords or Commons. We could recognize 
no one but the Monarch. We could contend with 
nothing less than Royalty. We could separate our- 
selves only from the Crown. English precedents 
had abundantly taught us that kings were not 
beyond the reach of arraignment and indictment; 
and arraignment and indictment were then our only 
means of justifying our cause to ourselves and to the 
world. Yes; harsh, severe, stinging, scolding, — I 
had almost said, — as that long series of allegations 
and accusations may sound, and certainly does 
sound, as we read it, or listen to it, in cold blood, a 



46 OKATlv»X- 

centmy after the i$s4ies are adl happilv senled. it -was 

a temperate and a dignified unerance under the cir- 

en: -" - of the case, and iH^eathed quite enough 

" - to be relished or accepted bv thoeie 

- " - - ^ "■ z the bnmt of so terrible a struggle 
for life aud -- - . r. and all that was dear to them, as 
that w^--^ '^^sie issues involved. X<m- in all that 
l«tier rT is theft? a angle count which does 
noi refer ■ rest upon. sc«ne vic^tion of the 
rigbr? -Tf j:- _ - ^. or some violati-'n of the rights 
of "T. TVe siaii'3 hv rbe L' jn. to-dav 
and alwavs. and disavow _- of its reascfnins" or 
its 

Ari. after alL Jefferson was z ^hit more 

severe on the Kmsr dian C: be 

King's IMinistQ^ ai njonths bei<wie. ^ 
tbem TO " :-es: " Ti: - of vour pjiii- 

M4l e<«idiivi .iiis been c««r ^i series of 

weatness. teiaerirr. de~ '- . " T- 

- . . " > r «i^ TVU- 
isam I .:.. ,_.- _ " - " '* ^ '- 



tJ>r» "^-Tr - _ 

•'-f I L- . r-:- : :i their 

- in the p"_ -rerve. I 

xfyr'Hi tb<r war to have been a mo>4 accursed, wicked. 



JULY 4, is7t;. 47 

barbarous, ciiiel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical 
war." 

I need not say, Fellow Citizens, that we are here 
to indulge in no reproaches upon Old England to- 
day, as we look back from the lofty height of a Cen- 
turv of Independence on the course of events which 
severed us from her dominions, ^e are by no 
means in the mood to re-open the adjudications of 
Ghent or of Geneva; nor can we allow the ties of 
old ti-aditions to be seriously jarred, on such an 
occasion as this, by any recent failures of extradi- 
tions, however vexatious or provoking. But, cer- 
tainly, resentments on either side, for any thing said 
or done during our Revolutionary period, — after 
such a lapse of time; — would dishonor the hearts 
which cherished them, and the tongues which ut- 
tered them. TTho wonders that George the Third 
would not let such Colonies as ours go without a 
strusrsrle? Thev were the brightest iewels of his 
crown. 'Who wonders that he shnank fi-om the 
responsibility of such a dismemberment of his em- 
pu-e, and that his brain reeled at the very thought of 
it? It would have been a poor compliment to us, 
had he not considered us worth holding at any and 
every cost. We should hardly have forgiven him, 
had he not desired to retain us. Xor can we alto- 
gether wonder, that with the views of kingly pre- 
rogative wliich belonged to that period, and in which 



48 ORATION. 

he was educated, he should have preferred the policy 
of coercion to that of conciliation, and should have 
insisted on sending over ti'oops to suhdue us. 

Our old Mother (Jountry has had, indeed, a pe- 
culiar destiny, and in many respects a glorious one. 
!Not alone with her drum-heat, as Webster so 
grandly said, lias she encircled the earth. Xot alone 
with her martial airs has she kept company with the 
hours. She has cari-ied civilization and Christianity 
wherever she has cairicd her Hag. She has carried 
her nohle tongue, with all its iucomparaI)le treasures 
of litei-atui'e and science and i"eligion, around the 
globe; and, with our aid, — for she will confess that 
we are doing our I'lill part in this line of extension, 
— it is fast bi'coming the most- pervading speech of 
civiHzed man. \\"e thank God at this hour, and 
at every iionr, that "Chathanrs language is our 
motlier tongue," and tliat we have an inlu ritcd and 
an indisputable share in the glory of so many of 
the great names by which tliat language has been 
illustrated and adoi-ncd. 

Hut she lias done more than all this. Siic has 
planted the great institutions and pi'lneiples of cIn il 
freedom in vwvy latitude wIhtc she could lind a 
foothold. From her oui' Kevolutionary Fathers 
learned to understand and value them, and ii-om her 
they inherited the spirit to dei'end them, ^"ot in 
vain had her brave barons extortt'd Magna Charta 



JULY 4, 1870. 49 

from King John. ISTot in vain had her Simon de 
Montfort snmmoned the knights and burgesses, and 
hiid the foundations of a Parhament and a House 
of Commons. Not in vain had her noble Sir 
John EUot died, as the martyr of free speech, in 
the Tower. IS^ot in vain had her heroic Hampden 
resisted ship-mouey, and died on the battle-field. 
Not in vain for us, certainly, the great examples and 
the gr-eat vs^arnings of Cromwell and the Connnon- 
wealth, or those sadder ones of Sidney and Russell, 
or that later and more glorious one still of William 
of Orange. 

The grand lessons of her own history, forgotten, 
overlooked or resolutely disregai'ded, it may l)e, on 
her own side of the Atlantic, in the days we are 
commemorating, were the very inspiration of her 
Colonies on this side; and under that inspiration 
they contended and conquered. And though she 
may sometimes be almost tempted to take sadly upon 
her lips the words of the old prophet, — "I have 
nourished and brought up children, and they have 
rebelled against me," — she has long ago learned 
that such a i-ebellion as ours was really in her own 
interest, and for her own ultimate welfare; Ijeguu, 
continued, and ended, as it was, in vindication of the 
liberties of Englishmen. 

I cannot forget how justly and eloquently my 
friend, Dr. Ellis, a few months ago, in this same 



50 ORATION. 

hall, g-ave expression to tlic respeet whicli is so 
widely entertained on tliis side of the Allantic f'oi' 
the Sovereign Lady \\lio has now graci-d tlic ilritisli 
throne for neai'ly forty years. \o j)assage oi' liis 
admirahle Oration elicited a -warmer res])onse fi'<ini 
the nuiltitndes who listened to him. How mueh of 
the growth and gi-andenr of Great Bi-itain is asso- 
ciated with tlu' names of illustrious wonirnl Kven 
those of ns Avho have no fancy lor female suffrage 
might often he well-nigh tempted to take refuge, 
from the incompetencies and intrigues and coi-rnj)- 
tions of men, under the presidency of tlu' j)urer and 
gentler sex. AThat woidd English history hi' with- 
out the names of Elizaheth and Anne! AMiat would 
it he without the name of A'ictoria, — of whom it 
has recently heen written, "that, hy a long course of 
loyal aeqniescenee in tlu- declared wishes of hei' 
])eoj)le, she has hrought aliout what is nothing less 
than a great Hevolntion, — all the mort' heni'ficent 
hecause it has heen gradual and silent!" i^vci- 
honored he her name, and that of her lamcnteil 
consort ! 

" Kvcr liiliivcd .■ind Iciviiii; iii:iv Ikt nilo lie: 
And hIicmi old Tiiiu' shall lead lu-r to her end, 
Goodness and she fill up one monument I " 

The Declaiation is ado|itcd and promulgated; hut 
we may not iorgct how long and how seHous a re- 



JULY 4, 1876. a 



^4 



luctance there had been to take the irrevocable step. 
As late as September, 1774, Washington had jnib- 
licly declared his belief that Independence "was 
wished by no thinking man." As late as the 6th of 
March, 1775, in his memoral)le Oration in the Old 
Sonth, with all the associations of "the Boston 
Massacre " fresh in his heart, Warren had declared 
that " Independence was not onr aim." As late as 
Jnly, 177.'5, the letter of the Continental Congress to 
the Lord Mayor and Coi'poration of London had 
said: "^N'orth America, my Lord, wishes most ar- 
dently for a lasting connection with Great Britain, on 
terms of jnst and equal liberty ; " and a simultaneous 
humble petition to the King, signed by every mem- 
ber of the Congress, reiterated the same assurance. 
And as late as the 25th of August, 1775, Jefferson 
himself, in a letter to the John Randolph of that 
day, speaking of those who " still wish for reunion 
with their parent country," says most emphatically, 
" I am one of those ; and would rather be in depend- 
ence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on 
any nation on earth, or than on no nation." ISTot all 
the blood of Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker 
Hill, crying from the ground long before these 
words were written, had extinguished the wish for 
reconciliation and reunion even in the heart of tlie 
very authoi- of the Declaration. 

Tell me not, tell me not, that there was any thing* 



52 ORATION. 

of equivocation, any thing of hyjwcrisy, in these and 

a liun<li'('(l otlier similar expressions wliicli niiii'ht I)i' 
cited. Tile ti'uest liuman liearts aiv full of such 
inconsistency and hypocrisy as that. The dearest 
friends, the Icnderest relatives, are never more over- 
flowing and outpouring, nor ever niori' sincei-e, in 
feelings and expressions of devotion and love, than 
when called to conteni])late some terrihle impending 
necessity of linal si'paration and divorct'. The ties 
between us and Old England could not he sundi'i'ed 
without sadness, and sadness on botli sides of the 
ocean. Fraiddin, albeit liis eyes were " unused to 
the mi'ltiug mood," is j-ecorded to have wept as he 
left England, in vii'W of the ini'vital)le result of 
which he was coming home 1o he a witness and an 
instrument; and T have heard from the poet Rogers's 
own lips, what many of you may have read in his 
Tahle-Talk, how dei'])ly he was im])rt'sst'd, as a luiy. 
by his father's ])utting on a mourning suit, wlnii 
he heard of Ihe fii-st shedding of American hlood. 

Xoi' could it, in the nature of things, ha\i' ht'cn 
oidy their \vai-iii and midouhlcd attachment to I'hig- 
land, which made so many of tlu' men of 177(5 
i-eluctant to the last to cross the Rubicon. They 
saw cU'arly bclure them, they could not hel]) seeing, 
the iiill |ir()]>(irtinus, the trcuiciidous ddds, of the 
contest into wliidi the ( 'olouics nuist be |)luiigi'd by 
•such a step. 'IMiink you that no appri'liciisious aud 



JULY i, 1S7G. 53 

anxieties weighed heavily on the minds and hearts of 
those far-seeing men? Think you tliat as their 
names were called on the day we commemorate, be- 
ginning with Josiah Bartlett, of 'New Hampshire, — 
or as, one by one, they approached the Secretary's 
desk on the following 2d of August, to write their 
names on that now hallowed parchment, — they did 
not realize the full i-esponsibility, and the full risk to 
theii- country and to themselves, which such a vote 
and such a signature involved? They sat, indeed, 
with closed doors ; and it is only from traditions or 
eaves-droppings, or from the casual expressions of 
diaries or letters, that we catch glimpses of what 
was done, or gleanings of what was said. But 
how full of import are some of those glimpses and 
gleanings ! 

"Will you sign?" said Hancock to Charles Car- 
roll, who, as we have seen, had not been present on 
the 4th of Jidy. " Most willingly," was the reply. 
" There goes two millions with a dash of the pen," 
says one of those standing by; while another re- 
marks, " Oh, Carroll, yon will get off, there are so 
many Charles Carrolls." And then Ave may see him 
stepping back to the desk, and putting that addition 
— " of Carrollton " — to his name, which will desig- 
nate him for ever, and be a prouder title of nobility 
than those in the ])eerage of Great Britain which 



54 ORATION. 

"wciv afU'Twnrds lulonicd by liis accomplislu'd jind 
fascinating grand-daugliters. 

"Wc must stand l)y each otlicr — wc iniisl liaiig 
together," — is pi-csciitly hcai'd from some one of tlie 
signers; witli the instant reply, ''Yes, we must hang 
togethei', or we shall assuredly hang separately." 
And, on this suggestion, the jwrtly and Inunorous 
Benj. Harrison, wliom we liave seen forcing Hancock 
into file Chair, may he heard bantei-ing our s])are and 
slender Elbridge Gerry, — levity provoking levity, — 
and telling him with grim merriment that, when that 
hanging scene arrives, he shall have the advantage: — 
"It will l>i' all o\'er with nic in a moment, hut you 
Avill he kicking in the aii' hall" an hour alter 1 am 
gone!" These arc among the "asides" of the 
drama, hut. 1 need not say, they more than make up 
in signiticancc lor all they may seem to lacd'C in 
dignity. 

The excellent William Ellery. (.f IJhodc Island. 
Avhose name was afterwai'ds hoi-ne hy his gi'andson. 
oiu' revci'cd ( 'hanning. ol'tcn spoke, we are told, ol' 
till' scene of the signing, and sp(d<e of it as an evi'Ut 
which many regarded with awe, perhaps with uncer- 
tainty, hut none Avith leai'. " I was determined." he 
used to say. "to see how all looked, as they signed 
what might l)e their death wai'i'ant. 1 placed myseH' 
heside the Sccri'tary. ( 'liarlcs 'rhom>on, and eye<l 
each closely as he allixcd his name to the docmnent. 



JULY 4, 187fi. 55 

Undaunted resolution was displayed in every coun- 
tenance.'' 

"You inquire," wrote John Adams to "William 
Plumer, "whether every member of Congress did, 
on the 4th of July, 1776, in ftict, cordially approve of 
the Declaration of Independence. They who Avere 
then members all signed it, and, as I could not see 
their hearts, it woidd be hard for me to say that they 
did not approve it; but, as far as I could penetrate 
the intricate internal foldings of their souls, I then 
believed, and have not since altered my opinion, that 
thefe were several who signed with regret, and 
several others with many doubts and nuich luke- 
warmness. The measure had been on the carpet for 
months, and obstinately opposed from day to day. 
Majorities were constantly against it. For many 
days the majority depended upon Mr. Hewes, of 
ISTorth Carolina. While a member one day was 
speaking, and reading documents from all the Colo- 
nies to prove that the public opinion, the general 
sense of all, was in favor of the measure, wheu he 
came to ISTorth Carolina, and produced letters and 
public proceedings which demonstrated that the 
majority of that Colony were in favor of it, Mr. 
HeAves, who had hitherto constantly voted against it, 
started suddenly upright, and lifting up both his 
hands to Heaven, as if he had been in a trance, cried 
out, ^It is done, and I will abide by it.' I would 



5G < I u A r I ( ) N . 

^•ivc in()i-(^ fni- a ])erioc-t ])aintmg of tlic terror and 
liori'or upon tlic faces di' ilie olil niajoril v, at tliat 
critieal moiiieiit, tliaii for the best i)ieee of liapliael." 

There is quite onougli in these traditions and hear- 
says, in these glinijises and g'leaning-s, to show ns 
that tlie sn])])orters and signers of the Deela ration 
were not bUnd to tlie responsibilities and hazai-ds in 
whieh the}' were involvmg- themselves and tlie loun- 
try. There is quite enough, eertainly, in these and 
other indications, to give color and credit to what I 
so well remember hearing tlu' late Mr. Justice Story 
say, half a century ago, that, as the result of all his 
conversations with the great men of the Revolution- 
ary Pericjd, — and es|)eclally with his ilhisti'ious and 
venerated chief on tiie bench of the Supi-enie Coui't 
of the United States. John Mai-siiall, — he was con- 
vinced that a majority of the Continental Congress 
Avas opposed to the I)eclai'ati<»n, and that it was car- 
ried thi'ough by tlu' patient, persistent, and over- 
whelming eiforts and arguments of the minoi'itv. 

Two of those arguments, as Mr. Jett'erson has lel't 
Iheni on record, were enough for that occasion, oi' 
certainly are enough foi- tiiis. 

One of the two was, "That tlu' people wait foi- us 
to lead the way; that llitij are in favor of the meas- 
ure, though the instructions given by some of their 
representatives ww not." And most true, indet'd, it 
was, mv frienils, at that day, as it often has been 



JULY 4, 187i;. 57 

since that clay, that the people were ahead of their 
so-called leaders. The minds of the masses were 
made np. They had no doubts or misgivings. They 
demanded that Independence should be recognized 
and proclaimed. John Adams knew how to keep up 
with them. Sam. Adams had kept his finger on 
their pulse from the beginning, and had "marked 
time " for every one of their advancing steps. Pat- 
rick Henry and Richard Henry Lee and Thomas 
Jetterson, and some other ardent and noble spirits, 
were by no means behind them. But not a few of 
the leaders were, in fact, only followers. " The peo- 
ple waited for them to lead the way." Independence 
was the resolve and the act of the American people, 
and the American jjeople gladly received, and enthu- 
siastically ratified, and heroically sustained the Dec- 
laration, imtil Independence was no longer a question 
either at home or abroad. Yes, our Great Charter, 
as we fondly call it, though with something, it must 
be confessed, of poetic or patriotic license, was no 
temporizing concession, wrung by menaces from 
reluctant Monarchs; but was the spontaneous and 
imperative dictate of a Nation resolved to be free ! 

The other of those two arguments was even more 
conclusive and more clinching. It was, " That the 
question was not whether by a Declaration of Inde- 
pendence we should make ourselves what we are 



58 ORATION. 

not, but Avhctlior Ave should doclarc a lact wliich 
already exists." 

"A fact Avhicli already exists!" Mr. Mayor and 
Fellow Citizens, there is no more interesting histoii- 
eal truth to us of Boston than this. Our hearts are 
ail at Philadelphia to-day, as I have ali'eady said, 
rejoicing- in all that is there said and done in honor 
of the men who made this day immortal, and hailinj>- 
it, with our fellow-eonutrymen, li-om ocean to ocean, 
and from the lakes to the gulf, as oui- National 
Birthday. And uobly has Philadelphia met the 
riciuisitions, and more than fultilled the exiiectations, 
of the occasion; furnishing- a fete and a pagi'ant of 
which the whole Xation is ])roud. Yet we are not 
cnlicd on to I'orget. — we coidd not l)e pardoned, 
indeed, for not remembering, — that, while the Dec- 
lai-atiou was boldly and grandly nuule in that hal- 
lowed Pennsylvania Hall, Tiulependence had already 
been won, — and won lierc in Massachusetts. It was 
said by somi' one of the old i)atriots, — John Adams, 
T Ix'lieve, — that '"the Kevolution was effected before 
tJH' war connnenced;" and Jefferson is now our 
authority for the assertion that "Independence I'x- 
isted before it was declared." They both well knew 
what they were talking about. Congi-esses in Car- 
jK'uters' Hall, and Congresses in the old Pennsyl- 
vania State House, did grand tilings and were 
composed ol' grand men, and we I'cndri- to llu-ir 



JULY 4, 187li. 59 

memories all the homage aiul all the glory which 
they so richl}^ earned. But here in Boston, the capi- 
tal of Massachusetts, and the principal town of 
British !N^orth America at that day, the question had 
already been brought to an issue, and already been 
irrevocably decided. Here the manifest destiny of 
the Colonies had been recognized and accepted. It 
was upon us, as all the world knows, that the blows 
of British oppression fell first and fell heaviest, — 
fell like a storm of hail-stones and coals of fire; and 
where they fell, and as soon as they fell, they were 
resisted, and successfully resisted. 

Why, away back in 1761, when George the Thu*d 
had been Ijut a year on his throne, and when the 
231-inter's ink on the pages of our Harvard "Pietas 
et Gratulatio" w^as hardly dry; when the Seven 
Years' War was still unfinished, in which Xew 
England had done her full share of the fighting, and 
reaped her full share of the glory, and when the 
British flag, by the help of her men and money, Avas 
just floating in triumijh over the whole American 
continent, — a mad resolution had been adopted to 
reconstruct — Oh, word of ill-omen ! — the whole 
Colonial system, and to bring America into closer 
conformity and subjection to the laws of the Mother 
Country. A Revenue is to be collected here. A 
Standing Army is to be established here. The Nav- 
igation Act and Acts of Trade are to be enforced 



GO OK AT I ON. 

jind t'xecutetl lieiv. And all withoul any representa- 
tion on our part. — The first ])racli(al ste]) in tliis 
direction is taken. A eusloni-house oilieer, named 
Coekle, api)lies to the Superior Coml at Salem for a 
writ of assistanee. That coekle-shell exploded like 
dynamite! The Court postpones the ease, and 
orders its argument in Boston. And then and there, 
— in ]7()], in our Old Town House, al'tei'wards 
known as the Old State House, — alas, alas, that it 
is thought necessary to talk aboiit removing or even 
reeonstrueting it! — James Otis, as John Adams 
himself tells us, *'l)reathed into this nation the breath 
of life." "Then and there," he adds, and he spoke 
of what he witnessed and heard, '^ tlien and there 
the ehild Inde])endence was Ixirn. In fifteen years, 
i. c, in 177(3, he grew uj) to manhood, and declared 
himself iice."'' 

The next year linds the same gi'eat scholar and 
orafoi' exposing himself to the ei-y of " treason " in 
denouncing the idea of taxation witliout representa- 
tion, and Ibrthwith vindieating himself in a masterl}^ 
pamphlet which I'xciti'd tlic ndiiiiratinn and sympathy 
of the whole people. 

Another year brings the first instalment of the 
scheme for raising a revenue in the Colonies, — in 
the shapt' of declai-atory resolves; and Otis mi'ets it 
plumply and l)ohlIy, in Fanenil TTall, — at tliat 
moment freshly rebuilt and reopenetl, — with the 



JULY -t, 1871;. 61 

counter declaration that " every British subject in 
America is, of common right, by act of Parhament, 
and l)y the hiws of God and Mature, entitled to all 
the essential privileges of Britons." 

And now George Grenville has devised and pro- 
posed the Stamp Act. And, before it is even 
known that the Bill had passed, Samuel Adams is 
heard reading, in that same Faueuil Hall, at the May 
meeting of 1764, those memorable instructions from 
Boston to her representatives : " There is no room 
for delay. If' taxes are laid upon us in any shape 
without our having a legal representation where they 
are laid, are we not reduced from the character of 
free subjects to the miserable state of tributary 
slaves'? . . . We claim British rights, not by 
charter only; we are born to them. Use your en- 
deavors that the weight of the other ]Srorth American 
Colonies may be added to that of this Province, that 
by united application all may happily obtain redress." 
Eedi'ess and Union — and union as the means, and 
the only meaus of redress — had thus early become 
the doctrine of our Boston leaders; and James Otis 
follows out that doctrine, without a moment's 
delay, in another Ijrilliant plea for the rights of the 
Colonies. 

The next year finds the pen of John Adams in 
motion, in a powerful conununication to the public 
journals, setting forth distinctly, that " there seems 



02 ORATION. 

to l)e a (lii'cct and f'oi-inal dcsin'ii on I'not in Great 
Britain to enslave all Aniei'ica; '' and adding- most 
ominously those emphatic words: "Be it rt-mem- 
bered, Liberty must be defended at all hazards! " 

And, I need not say, it was remembered ; and 
Liberty was defended, at all hazards, lierr updu our 
own soil. 

Ten long" 3'ears, however, are still to elapse before 
tJK' wag'er of battle is to be fully joined. The stir- 
ring c'M'iits which crowded those years, and which 
have ])een so vividly depicted by Spai'ks and Ban- 
croft and Frothing-ham, — to name no others, — are 
too famifiar for repetition or reference. Virginia, 
through tlic clarion voice ol' Patrick Henry, nobly 
sustained by her House of Burgesses, leads oft' in 
the grand remonstrance. Massachusetts, through 
the trumpet tones of James Otis, rouses the whole 
Continent l)y a demand for a General Congress. 
South Carolina, througli the inlluence of Christopher 
Gadsden, res])onds lirst to the demand. "Deep 
calleth unto deep." In Octobt'r, ITG.J, delegates, 
regularly or irregularly chosen, Irom nine Colonies, 
ai'c in consultation in New York; and from. South 
Carolina comes the watchword of assured success: 
" There ought to be no Xew England man, no Xew 
Yorker, knowji on tlic Continent; but all of us 
Americans."' 

Meautune, the people are e\erywhere intlamed and 



JULY 4, 1876. 03 

maddened by the attempt to enforce the Stamp Act. 
Everywhere that attempt is resisted. Everywhere it 
is resolved that it shall never be executed. It is at 
length repealed, and a momentary lull succeeds. 
But the repeal is accompanied by more declaratory 
resolutions of the power of Parliament to tax the 
Colonies "in all cases whatsoever;" and then fol- 
lows that train of abuses and usurpations which 
Jefferson's immortal paper charges upon the King, 
and which the King hunself unquestionably ordered. 
"It was to no purpose," said Lord ^orth, in 1774, 
" making objections, for the King would have it so." 
" The King," said he, " meant to try the question Avith 
America." And it is well added by the narrator of 
the anecdote, " Boston seems to have been the place 
fixed upon to try tlie question." 

Yes, at Boston, the bolts of Royal indignation are 
to be aimed and winged. She has been foremost in 
destroying the Stamps, in defying the Soldiers, in 
drowning the Tea. Letters, too, have reached the 
government, like those which Rehum the Chancellor 
and Shimshai the Scribe wrote to King Artaxerxes 
about Jerusalem, calling this " a rebellious city, and 
hurtful unto Kings and Provinces, and that they have 
moved sedition within the same of old time, and would 
not pay toll, tribute, and custom;" and warning His 
Majesty that, unless it was subdued and crushed, 
" he woidd have no poi'tion on this side tlie River." 



64 ORATION. 

Til vain did our cloiiiU'iit young Quiiicy pnnv Inrtli his 
biirning words oi" iciiioustrance. The Port of Boston 
is closed, and lier jx'ojjle are to be starved into eoin- 
plianee. Well did Boston say of liersell". in Town 
Meeting, that "She had I)eeii stationed by l*i-ovidenee 
in the front rank ol" the coiitliet." Gi'andly has our 
('loi|uent historian. Bancroft, said of her. in a sen- 
tence which suras up the whole matter "like the last 
embattling of a liouian legion": — " The King set 
himself and his ^linistry and his Parliament and all 
Great Bi-itaiu to subdue to his Avill one stubborn 
little town on the sterile coast of the Massachusetts 
Hay. '^riie odds against it AVere fearful; but it 
showed a life iiu'xtingnishable, and had bei'ii chosen 
to kei'p guard over the lii)erties of mankind!" 

(n'uerously and iio])ly did the other Colonies come 
to oni' aid. and the cause of Boston Avas everywhere 
a(d<n<)\vledged to be "the cause of all." But we may 
not forget how peculiarly it was "the cause of Bos- 
ton." and that here on our oAvn Massachnsetts soil, 
the practical ([uestion of Indei)endenee was first tried 
and virtually settled. The brave ( 'olonel Pitdvci'ing 
at Salem Bridge, the heroic minute men at Lexington 
and Concord Bridge, the gallant Colonel Prescott at 
Hunker Hill, did their ])art in hastening that settle- 
ment and lii-inging it to a crisis; and when the ( 'oii- 
lineiUal Army was at length brought to our rescue, 
and the glorious Washington, after holding the 



JULY 4, 187G. 65 

British forces at buy for nine months, had fairly 
driven them from the town, — thongh more than 
three months were still to intervene before the Dec- 
laration was to be made, — it conld truly and justly 
be said that it was only " the declaration of a fact 
which already exists." 

Indeed, Massachxisetts had practically administered 
" a government independent of the King " from the 
19th of July, 1775; while on the very first day of 
May, 177G, her General Court had passed a solemn 
Act, to erase forthwith the name of the King, and the 
year of his reign, from all civil commissions, writs, 
and precepts ; and to substitute therefor " the Year 
of the Christian Era, and the name of the Govern- 
ment and the people of the Massachusetts Bay in 
New England." Other Colonies may have empow- 
ered or instructed their delegates in Congress, earlier 
than this Colony, to act on the subject. But this 
was action itself, — positive, decisive, conclusive 
action. The Declaration was made iii Philadelphia; 
but the Independence which was declared can date 
back nowhere, for its first existence as a fact, earlier 
than to Massachusetts. Upon her the lot fell " to try 
the question ; " and, with the aid of Washington and 
the Continental Army, it was tried, and tried trium- 
phantly, upon her soil. Certainly, if Faneuil Hall 
was the Cradle of Liberty, our Old State House was 
the Cradle of Independence, and om* Old South the 



G() OKATIUN. 

Niu'sery of Libei-ty and Tiidcpencleiiee both; and if 
these sacivd edific-es, all or any of tlu'in, are indeed 
destined to disa])pear, let us see to it that some eor- 
ner of their sites, at least, l)e eoiiseerated to monu- 
ments whieh shall tell their story, in legible lettering, 
to our children and our children's children for ever! 

Thanks l)e to God, that, in His good jirovidence, 
the trial of this great question fell pi-iniarily ni)on a 
Colony and a people peculiarly fitted to meet it; — 
whose whole condition and training had prepared 
them lor it, and Avhose whole history had pointed 
to it. 

AVh}', quaint old John Evelyn, in his delicious 
Diary, tells us, undei- date of May, 1671, that the 
great anxiety of the Council loi- Plantations, of which 
he had just been made :t member, was "to know the 
condition of Xew England," which appeared "to be 
very independent as to their regai-d to Old England 
oi- His Majesty," and "ahnost ujjou the vi-ry brink of 
renouncing any de|)entlence on the Crown! " 

" 1 have always laughed," said John Adams, in a 
letter to Benjamin Kush, in 1807, "at the aft'cctation 
of re])resenting American Independence as a novel 
idea, as a modern discovery, as a late invention. The 
idea ol" it as a possible thing, as a probable event, as 
a necessary and unaxoidable measure, in case Great 
Britain should assume an unconstitutional authority 
over us, has been familiar to Americans from the first 



JULY i, 1876. 67 

settlement of the country, and was as Avell under- 
stood by Governor Winthrop, in 1675, as by Governor 
Samuel Adams, when he told you that Independence 
had been the first wish of his heart for seven years." 
"The principles and feelings which produced the 
Revolution," said he again, in his second letter to 
Tudor, in 1818, "ought to be traced back for two 
hundred years, and sought in the history of the coun- 
try from the first plantations in America." The first 
emigrants, he maintains, were the true authors of our 
Independence, and the men of the Revolutionary 
period, himself among them, were only " the awaken- 
ers and revivers of the original fundamental principle 
of Colonization." 

And the accomplished historian of l^ew England, 
Dr. Palfrey, follows up the idea, and says more pre- 
cisely: "He who well weighs the fiicts Avhich have 
been presented in connection with the principal 
emigration to Massachusetts, and other related facts 
which will ofler themselves to notice as we proceed, 
may find himself conducted to the conclusion that 
when Winthrop and his associates (in 1G29) pre- 
pared to convey across the water a Charter fi-om the 
King, which, they hoped, would in their beginnings 
afibrd them some protection both from himself and, 
through him, from the Powers of Continental 
Europe, they had conceived a project no less im- 
portant than that of laying on this side of the 



68 ORATION. 

Atlantic the foundations of a !N"ation of Puritan 
Englishmen, — foundations to be built upon as future 
circumstances should decide or allow." 

Indeed, that transfer of their Charter and of their 
" whole government " to Xew England, on their own 
responsibility, Avas an act closely approaching to a 
Declaration of Independence, and clearly foreshad- 
owing it. And when, only a few years afterwards, 
we find the magistrates and deputies resisting a 
demand for the surrender of the Chartei", studiously 
and systematically " avoiding and protracting " all 
questions on the subject, and " hastening their for- 
tifications " meantime ; and when we hear even the 
ministers of the Colony openly declaring that, " if a 
General Governor were sent over here, we ought not 
to accept him, but to defend our lawful possessions, 
if we were able," — we recognize a spirit and a 
]uu-i)ose Avhich cannot be mistaken. That spirit and 
that ])urpose Avere manifested and illusti-atcd in a 
manner even more marked and unequivocal, — as 
the late venerable Josiah Quinc_y reminded tlio 
people of Boston, just half a century ago to-day, — 
when under the lead of one Avho had come over in 
the ship with the Chartci-, and had lived to be the 
Nestor of New England, — Suuon Bradstreet, — " a 
glorious Revolution was effected here in Massachu- 
setts thirty days before it was known. tliat King Wil- 
liam had just ettected a similar glorious lie volution 



JULY 4, 1876. 69 

on the other side of the Atlantic." 'New England, 
it seems, with characteristic and commendable de- 
sijatch, had fairly got rid of Sir Edmnnd Andros, a 
month before she knew that Old England had got 
rid of his Master! 

But I do not forget that we must look further 
back than even the earliest settlement of the Amer- 
ican Colonies for the primal Fiat of Independence. 
I do not forget that when Edmund Burke, in 1775, 
in alluding to the iJossibility of an American repre- 
sentation m Parliament, exclaimed so emphatically 
and eloquently, "Opposuit Natui'a — I cannot re- 
move the eternal barriers of the creation," he had 
really exhausted the whole argument. No effective 
representation was possible. If it had been possible, 
England herself would have been aghast at it. The 
very idea of James Otis and 'Patrick Henry and the 
Adamses arguing the great questions of human 
rights and popular liberty on the floor of the House 
of Commons, and in the hearing of the common 
people of Great Britain, would have thrown the 
King and Lord North into convulsions of terroi', and 
we should soon have heard them crying out, " These 
men that have turned the world upside down are 
come hither also." One of their own Board of 
Trade (Soame Jenyus) well said, with as much truth 
as hmnor or sarcasm, "I have lately seen so many 
specimens of the great powers of speech of which 



70 ORATION. 

these American gentlemen are possessed, that I 
should be afraid the sudden importation of so mucli 
eloquence at once would endanger the safety of 
England. It will be much cheaper for us to pay 
their jVrmy than their Orators." But no effective 
representation was possible; and without it Taxation 
was Tyranny, in si)ite of the great Dictionary dog- 
matist and his insolent pamjihlet. 

AVhy, even in these days of Ocean Steamers, 
reducing the passage across the Atlantic from forty 
or fifty or sixty days to ten, representation in West- 
minster Hall is not proposed for the colonies which 
England still hold son our continent; and it would 
be little better than a farce, if it were i)roposed and 
attempted. The Dominion of Canada, as we all 
know, remains as she is, seeking neither indepen- 
dence nor annexation, only because her people prefer 
to be, and are ])roud of being, a part of the Kritish 
empire; and because that empire has abandoned all 
military occupation or forcible restraint upon them, 
and has adopted a system involving no collision or 
contention. Canada is now doubly a monument of 
the greatness and wisdom of the immortal Chatham. 
TTis military policy' conquered it for England; and 
his civil policy, "ruling from his urn,"' and supple- 
mented by that of his great son, holds it for I'higland 
at this day ; j)erinitling it substantially to rule itself, 
through the agency of a Parliament of its own, with 



JULY i, 1876. 71 

at this moment, as it liappcns, an able, intelligent, 
and accomplished Governor-General, Avhose name 
and blood were not without close affinities to those 
of that marvellovis statesman and orator while he 
lived. 

It did not require the warning of our example to 
bring about such results. It is written m the eternal 
constitution of things that no large colonies, edu- 
cated to a sense of their rights and capable of 
defending them, — no English or Anglo-Saxon colo- 
nies, certainly, — can be governed by a Power three 
thousand miles across an ocean, unless they are gov- 
erned to their own satisfaction, and held as colonies 
with their own consent and free will. An Imperial 
military sway may be as elastic and far-reaching as 
the magnetic wires, — it matters not whether three 
thousand or fifteen thousand miles, — over an unciv- 
ilized region or an unenlightened race. But who is 
wild enough to conceive, as Burke said a hundred 
years ago, " that the natives of Hindostan and those 
of Yirginia could be ordered in the same manner; or 
that the Cutchery Court and the grand jury at 
Salem could be regulated on a similar plan"? "I 
am convinced," said Fox, in 1791, in the fresh light 
of the experience America had afforded him, " that 
the only method of retaining distant Colonies with 
advantage is to enable them to govern themselves." 

Yes, from the hour when Columbiis and his com- 



72 ORATION'. 

peers discovered our continent, its ultimate political 
destiny was fixed. At the very gateway of the 
Pantheon of American Libei-ty and American Inde- 
])eiuli'iiee mig'ht well be seen a triple monument, like 
that to tlie old inventors of printing at Frankfort, 
including Columbus and Araericus Vespucius and 
Cabot. They were the pioneers in the march to 
Independence. They were the precursors in the 
only progress of freedom which was to have no 
backward steps. Liberty had struggled long and 
bravely in other ages and in other lands. It had 
made glorious manifestations of its power and 
promise in Athens and in Kome; in the mediaeval 
republics of Italy; on the ]ilains of Germany; along 
the dykes of Holhuul; among the icy fastnesses of 
Switzerland; and, more secuivly and hopefully still, 
in the sea-girt isle of Old England. But it was the 
glory of those heroic old navigators to reveal a 
standing-place for it at last, where its levei- could 
lind a secure fulcrum, and rest safely until it had 
moved the world! The fulness of time had now 
come. Under an impulse of religious conviction, 
the ])oor, ]K'rsecuted Pilgrims launched out upon the 
stormy deej) in a single, leaking, almost foundering 
bark; and in the very cabin of the "May-flower" the 
first wi'itten compact of self-government in the his- 
tor}- of mankind is prepared and signed. Ten years 
afterwards the Massachusetts Company come over 



JULY 4, 1876. 73 

with their Charter, and administer it on the avowed 
principle that the whole government, civil and 
religious, is transferred. All the rest Avhich is to 
follow until the 4th of July, 1776, is only matter of 
time and opportunity. Certainly, my friends, as we 
look hack to-day through the long vista of the past, 
we perceive that it was no mere Declaration of men, 
which primarily brought about the Indej^endence we 
celebrate. We cannot but reverently recognize the 
hand of that Almighty Maker of the World, who 
" founded it upon the seas and established it upon 
the floods." We cannot but feel the full force and 
felicity of those opening words, in which the Decla- 
ration speaks of our assuming among the powers of 
the earth, " that separate and equal station to which 
the laws of Nature and of ISTature's God entitle 



I spoke, Mr. Mayor, at the outset of this Oration, 
of " A Century of Self-Government Completed." 
And so, in some sort, it is. The Declaration at 
Philadelphia was, in itself, both an assertion and an 
act of self-government ; and it had been preceded, or 
was immediately followed, by provisions for local 
self-government in all the separate "Colonies; — . 
Massachusetts, 'New Hampshire, and South Carolina, 
conditionally, at least, having led the way. But we 
may not forget that sis or seven years of hard fight- 

10 



74: ORATIOX. 

ing are still to intervene before onr Independence is 
to be acknowledored bv Great Britain; and six or 
seven years more before the full consummation vriU 
have been reached by the adoption of the Federal 
Constitution, and the organization of our Xational 
System under the august and ti-anscendent Presi- 
dencv of Washington. 

With that august and transcendent Presidency, 
dating, — as it is pleasant to remember, — precisely a 
himdred years from the analogous accession of Wil- 
liam of Orange to the throne of England, our history 
as an organized Xation fairly begins. AVhen that 
Centennial Anniversary shall amve, thirteen years 
hence, the time may have come for a full review of 
our Xational career and character, and for a complete 
computation or a just estimate of what a Century of 
Self-Govenmient has accomplished for ourselves and 
for mankind. 

I dared not attempt such a review to-day. This 
Anniversary has seemed to me to belong peculiarly, 
— I had almost said, sacredly, — to the men and the 
events which rendered the Fourth of July so mem- 
orable for ever ; and I have willingly left myself little 
time for any thing else. God gi*ant, that, when the 
30th of April, 1889, shall dawn upon those of us who 
may Uve to see it, the thick clouds which now darken 
our poUtical sky may have passed away; that whole- 
some and healing coimsels may have prevailed 



JULY 4, 187B. 75 

throughout our hind; that integrity and purity may 
be once more conspicuous in our high places; that 
an honest currency may have been re-establislied, and 
prosperity restored to all branches of our domestic 
industry and our foreign commerce; and that some 
of those social problems which are perplexing and 
tormenting so many of our Southern States may have 
been safely and satisfactorily solved ! 

For, indeed, Fellow Citizens, we cannot shut our 
eyes to the fact, that this great year of our Lord and 
of American Liberty has been ushered in by not a few 
discouraging and depressing circumstances. Appall- 
ing catastrophes, appalling crimes, have marked its 
course. Financial, political, moral, delinquencies and 
wrongs have swept over our land like an Arctic or 
an Antarctic wave, or both conjoined; until we have 
been almost ready to cry out in anguish to Heaven, 
" Thou hast multiplied the nation, but not increased 
the joy! " It will be an added stigma, in all time to 
come, on the corruption of the hour, and on all con- 
cerned in it, that it has cast so deep a shade over om* 
Centennial Festival. 

All this, however, we are persuaded, is temporary 
and exceptional, — the result, not of our institutions, 
but of disturbing causes ; and as distinctly traceable 
to those causes as the scoriae of a volcano, or the 
debris of a deluge. Had there been no long and 
demoralizing Civil War to account for such develop- 



7G UKATIOX. 

ments, wo might indeed l)e alarmed for our future. 
As it is, oui- confidence in the Republic is unshaken. 
We are ready even to accept all ihat has occurred to 
overshadow our jubilee, as a seasonable warning- 
a<^ainst vain-glorious boastings; as a timely admoni- 
tion that our institutions arc not ])roof against licen- 
tiousness and profligacy, but that " eternal vigilance 
is still the price of liberty." 

Already the reaction has commenced. Already 
the people are everywhere roused to the importance 
of something higher than mere partisan activity and 
zeal, and to a sense that something besides " big 
wars" may be required to "make ambition virtue." 
Everywhere the idea is scouted that there are any 
immxmities or impunities for bribery and cori'uption; 
and the scorn of the whole people is deservedly cast 
on any one detected in plucking our Eagle's wings 
to feather his own nest. Everywhere there is a de- 
mand for integrity, for principle, for character, as the 
only safe ([ualifications for public employments, as 
well as for private trusts. Oh, let that demand be 
enforced and insisted on, — as I hoi)e and believe it 
will be, — and we shall have nothing to fear for our 
freedom, and but little to regret in the tem])orary 
depression and mortification which have recalled us 
to a deeper sense of our dangers and our duties. 

Meantime, we may be more than content that no 
short-comings or failures of our OAvn day can diminish 



JULY i, 187G. 77 

the glories of the past, or dim the brilliancy of suc- 
cesses achieved by onr Fathers. We can look back 
upon our history so far, and find in it enough to make 
us grateful; enough to make us hopeful; enough to 
make us j)roud of our institutions and of our country; 
enough to make us resolve never to desjjair of the 
Republic; enough to assiu'e us that, could our 
Fathers look down on all which has been accom- 
plished, they would feel that their toils and sacrifices 
had not been in vain; enough to convince other 
nations, and the world at large, that, in imiting so 
generously with us to decorate om* grand ExjDosition, 
and celebrate our Centennial Birthday, they are 
swelling the triumi:)hs of a People and a Power which 
have left no doubtful impress upon the hundred years 
of their Independent IS^ational existence. 

Those hundred years have been crowded, as we all 
know, with wonderful changes in all quarters of the 
globe. I would not disparage or depreciate the 
interest and importance of the great events and great 
reforms which have been witnessed during their 
progress, and especially near their end, in almost 
every country of the Old World. ISTor would I pre- 
smne to claim too confidently for the closing Cen- 
tury, that when the records of mankind are made up, 
in some far-distant future, it will be remembered 
and designated, peculiarly and pre-eminently, as The 
American Age. Yet it may well be doubted. 



78 ORATION. 

whether the dispassionate historian of after years 
Avill find that the inlhiences of any otlicr nation have 
been of iarther reacli and wider range, or of more 
eflieiency for the welfare of tlie woi'ld, than those of 
our Great RepiibUc, since it liad a name and a place 
on the earth. 

Other ages have had their designations, local or 
personal or mythical, — historic or pre-historic; — 
Ages of stone or iron, of silver or gold; Ages of 
Kings or Queens, of Refoi-mers or of Conquerors. 
That marvellous compound of almost every thing 
wise or foolish, noble or base, witt}- or ridiculous, 
sublime or profane, — Voltaire, — maintained that, in 
his day, no man of reflection or of taste could count 
more than four authentic Ages in the history of the 
world: 1. That of Pliilip and Alexander, with Peri- 
cles and Demosthenes, Aristotle and Plato, Apelles, 
Phidias and l*raxiteles: 2. That of Caesar and 
Augustus, with Lucretius and Cicero and Livy, 
Vii'gil and Horace, Varro and Yitruvius: 3. That 
of the Medici, with Michel Angelo and Kaphael, 
Galileo and Dante: 4. That which he was at the 
moment engaged in depicting, — the Age of Louis 
Xr\"., which, in his judgment, surpassed all the 
others ! 

Our vViiierican Age could \)vi\r no comparison with 
Ages like these, — measured only by the brilliancy 
of historians and philosophers, of poets or painters. 



JULY i, 1876. 79 

We need not, indeed, be ashamed of what has been 
done for Literature and Science and Art, during 
these hundred years, nor hesitate to point with pride 
to our own authors and artists, hving and dead. 
But the day has gone by when Literature and the 
Pine Arts, or even Science and the Useful Arts, can 
characterize an Age. There are other and higher 
measures of comparison. And the very nation 
which counts Voltaire among its greatest celebrities, 
— the nation which aided us so generously in our 
Revolutionary struggle, and which is now rejoicing 
in its own successful establishment of republican 
institutions, — the land of the gi'eat and good La- 
fayette, — has taken the lead in pointing out the true 
grounds on which our American Age may challenge 
and claim a special recognition. An association of 
Frenchmen, — under the lead of some of their most 
distinguished statesmen and scholars, — has proposed 
to erect, and is engaged in erecting, as their contri- 
bution to our Centennial, a gigantic statue at the 
very throat of the harbor of our supreme commer- 
cial emporium, which shall symbolize the legend 
inscribed on its pedestal, — "Liberty enlightening 
the World!" 

That glorious legend presents the standard by 
which our Age is to be judged; and l)y which we 
may well be willing and proud to have it judged. 
All else in our own career, certainly, is secondary. 



80 ORATION. 

The growth and granckniv of our territorial dimen- 
sions; the multiplication of our States; the number 
and size and wealth of our eities; the marvellous 
mcrease oC our poi)ulatiou; the measureless extent 
of our railways and internal navigation; our over- 
flowing-granaries; our inexhaustible mines; our 
countless inventions and multitudinous industries, — 
all these may be remitted to tlio (Jeusus, and left for 
the students of statistics. The claim which our 
count i-y presents, for giving no second or subordi- 
nate character to the Age which has just closed, rests 
only on what has been accomplished, at home and 
abroad, for elevating the condition of mankind; for 
ndvanciug political and Inuuan fi'cedom; for promot- 
ing the greatest good of tlie greatest numl)er; for 
proving the capacity of man for self-government; and 
for "enlightening the world'' by the example of a 
I'ationnl, regulated, enduring. Constitutional J^il)erty. 
And who will dispute or question that elaimV In 
what rt'gion of thi' earth ever so remote from us. in 
what corner of creation evei- so fai- out of tlie range 
of onr connnunieation, does not some burden light- 
ened, some bond loosened, some yoke lifted, some 
labor,l)ettcr remunerated, some new hope for despair- 
ing hearts, some new light or new lil)crty for the' 
benighted or the o])pressed, bear witness this day, 
and trace itself directly or indirt'ctly l)ack. to the 
impulse given to tlu- world hy tlie successful estab- 



JULY i, 1876. 81 

lishment and operation of Free Institutions on this 
American Continent! 

How many Colonies have been more wisely and 
humanely and liberally administered, under the warn- 
ing of our Revolution! How many Churches have 
abated something of their old intolerance and big- 
otry, under the encoiiragement of our religious free- 
dom ! Who believes or imagines that Free Schools, 
a Free Press, the Elective Franchise, the Rights of 
Representation, the principles of Constitutional Gov- 
ernment, Avould have made the notable progress they 
have made, had our example been wanting! Who 
believes or imagines that even the Rotten Boroughs 
of Old England would have disappeared .so rapidly, 
had there l)een no American Representative Re- 
public ! And has there been a more effective influ- 
ence on human welfare and human freedom, since 
the world began, than that which has resulted from 
the existence of a great land of Liberty in this 
Western Hemisphere, of unbomided resources, with 
acres enough for so many myriads of home's, and 
with a welcome for all who may fly to it from oppres- 
sion, from every region beneath the sim? 

Let not our example be perverted or dishonored, 
by others or by oiu-selves. It was no wild breaking 
away from all authority, which we celebrate to-day. 
It was no mad revolt against every thing like govern- 
ment. No incendiary torch cau be rightfully kindled 
11 



82 ORATION. 

at our name. Doubtless, there had been excesses 
and \ iolenees m many {[uarters of onr land, — irre- 
pressible outbreaks nnder unbearable ])r()\(Katious, 
— " irregular things, done in the eonfnsiou of mighty 
troubles." Doubtless, our Boston mobs did not 
always move " to the Dorian mood of flutes and soft 
recorders." But in all our deliberative assemblies, in 
all our To\vn Meetings, iu all our Provincial and 
Continental Congresses, there was a respin-l loi- 
the great principles of LaAV and Order; and llie 
definition of true civil li])erty, which had been so 
reiuarkably laid down by one of the founders of our 
Commonwealth, more than a century before, was, 
consciously or unconsciously, recognized, — " a Lib- 
erty for that only which is good, just, and honest." 

The Declaration we commemorate expressl}^ ad- 
mitted and asserted that "governments long estaby 
lished should not be changed for light and transient 
causes." It dictated no special forms of government 
for otlier people, and hardly for ourselves. It had 
no denunciations, or even disparagements, foi- uion- 
archies or for empires, but eagerly contemplatcil, as 
we do at this hour, alliances and friendly relations 
with both. We have welcomed to oui' Jnl)ilee, with 
peculiar intei'est and gratiiication, tiic representatives 
of the nations of Europe, — all then monarchical, — 
to whom we were so deeply indebted for sympathy 
and for assistance in our struggle for Independence. 



JULY 4, 1876. 83 

"We have welcomed, too, the personal presence of an 
Emperor, from another qnarter of our own hem- 
isphere, of whose eager and enlightened interest in 
Education and Literature and Science we had 
learned so much from our lamented Agassiz, and 
have now witnessed so much for ourselves. 

Our Fathers were no propagandists of repuhlican 
institutions in the abstract. Their own adoption of 
a republican form was, at the moment, almost as 
much a matter of chance as of choice, of necessity 
as of preference. The Thirteen Colonies had, hap- 
pily, been too long accustomed to manage their own 
atfiiirs, and wei-e too wisely jealous of each other, 
also, to admit for an instant any idea of centraliza- 
tion; and without centralization a monarchy, or any 
other form of arbitrary government, was out of the 
question. Union was then, as it is now, the only 
safety for liberty ; but it could only be a constitutional 
Union, a limited and restricted Union, founded on 
compromises and mutual concessions ; a Union recog- 
nizing a large measure of State rights, — resting 
not only on the division of powers among legislative 
and executive departments, but resting also on the 
distribution of powers between the States and the 
JS^ation, both deriving their original authority from 
the people, and exercising that authority for the 
people. This was the system contemplated by 
the Declaration of 1776. This was the system 



84 ORATION. 

approximated to by the Confederation of 1778-81. 
This was the system finally consimimated by the 
Constitution of 1789. And under this system our 
great examijle of self-government has been lu'ld uj) 
before the nations, fulfilliug, so far as it has ful- 
filled it, that lofty mission whieh is recognized 
to-day, as " Liberty enlightening the World ! *' 

Let me not speak of that example in any vain- 
glorious spirit. Let me not seem to arrogate for my 
country any thing of superior wisdom or virtue. 
Who will pretend that we have always made the 
most of our independence, or the best of our lil)c'rty? 
Who will maintain that Ave have ahvays exhibited the 
l)rightest side of our institutions, or always entrusted 
their administration to the wisest or worthiest men? 
Who will deny that we have sometimes taught the 
world what to avoid, as well as what to imitate; and 
tliat the cause of fivedom and ri'form has sometimes 
been discouraged and put back In' our short-com- 
ings, or by our excesses? Our Light has been, at 
best, but a Revolving Light; warning by its darker 
intervals or its sombre shades, as well as cheering by 
its flashes of bivilliancy, or by the clear lusti'c of its 
steadier shining. Yi't, in spite of all its imperfec- 
tions and irregularities, to no other earthly light 
lia\(' so many eyes been turned; from no other 
eai'lldN ilhunination have so niany hearts drawn hope 
and courage. Jt has breasted the tides of sectional 



JULY 4, 1876. 85 

and of party strife. It has stood the shock of for- 
eign and of ci^'il war. It will still hold on, erect 
and nnextiugnished, defj-ing "the retimiing wave " of 
demoralization and corrui^tion. Millions of yonng 
hearts, in all qnarters of oui' land, are awaking at 
this moment to the responsibility which rests pecu- 
liarly upon them, for rendering its radiance purer 
and brighter and more constant. Millions of young 
hearts are resolving, at this hour, that it shall not be 
their fault if it do not stand for a century to come, as 
it has stood for a century past, a Beacon of Liberty 
to mankind ! Their little flags of hope and promise 
are floating to-day from eveiy cottage window along 
the roadside. With those young hearts it is safe. 

Meantime, we may all rejoice and take courage, as 
we remember of how great a drawback and obstruc- 
tion our example has been disembarrassed and re- 
lieved within a few years past. Certainly, we 
cannot forget this day, in looking back over the 
century which is gone, how long that example was 
overshadowed, in the eyes of all men, by the exist- 
ence of African Slavery in so considerable a portion 
of our country. I^ever, never, however, — it may 
be safely said, — was there a more tremendous, a 
more dreadful, problem submitted to a nation for 
solution, than that which this institution involved for 
the United States of America. Nor were we alone 
responsible for its existence. I do not speak of it in 



86 OKATION. 

the way of apology for ourselves. Still less ■would I 
refer to it in the way of crimination or reproach 
towards others, aljroad or at home. Biit the well- 
known paragraph on this suljject, in the oi-iginal 
draught of the Declaration, is quite too notable a 
reminiscence of the little desk jjefore me, to bc^ for- 
gotten on such an occasion as this. Tliat omitted 
clause, — which, as Mr. Jefferson tells us, "was 
struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and 
Georgia," not without " tenderness," too, as he adds, 
to some " Northern brethren, who, though they had 
wvy few slaves themselves, had been pretty consid- 
erable carriers of them to others," — contained the 
direct allegation that the King had "prostituted his 
negative for suppressing every legislative attemi)t to 
])rohibit or restrain lliis execrable commerce." I'liat 
mrniorable clause, ouiittt'd for ])rndential reasons 
oiih, has passed into history, and its trntii can ni'vei- 
be disputed. It recalls to us, and rt'calls to the 
world, the historical fact, — which we certainly have 
a special I'ight to i-eineniber this day, — that not only 
had African Slavery found its portentous and per- 
nicious Avay into our Colonies in their veiy earliest 
settlement, but that it had been lixed and iastened 
upon some ol' them by lloyal vetoes, i)rohibiling the 
j)ass;ige ol" laws to restrain its further inli-odnction. 
Tt had thus not only t'ut wined and entangled itsell 
about the very roots of our choicest harvests, — 



JULY 4, 1876. 87 

until Slavery and Cotton at last seemed as insepa- 
rable as the tares and wheat of the sacred par- 
able, — but it had engrafted itself upon the very 
fabric of our government. We all kuow, the world 
knows, that our Independence could not have been 
achieved, our Union could not have been maintained, 
our Constitution could not have been established, 
without the adoption of those compromises which 
recognized its continued existence, and left it to the 
responsibility of the States of which it was the 
grievous inheritance. And Irom that day forward, 
the method of dealing with it, of disposing of it, and 
of extinguishing it, became more and more a prob- 
lem fidl of terrible perplexity, and seemingly inca- 
pable of human solution. 

Oh, that it could have been solved at last by some 
process less deplorable and di-eadful than Civil War! 
How imspeakably glorious it would have been for us 
this day, could the Great Emancipation have been 
concerted, arranged, and ultimately effected, without 
violence or bloodshed, as a simple and sublime act of 
philanthropy and justice ! 

But it was not in the Divine economy that so 
huge an original wi'ong should be righted by any 
easy process. The decree seemed to have gone forth 
from the very registries of Heaven: 

" Cuneta prius tentanda, scd iniiuedicabile vulnus 
Ense rfcidenilura est." 



88 ORATIOX. 

The immedicable womid iiiiist ]k' cut ;nvay Iw the 
sword! Again and ai;ain as that terrible war went 
on, wi' might ahnost heai- voices crying- out, in the 
Avords of the old propliet: "O thou swoi-d of the 
Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? Put 
up thysell" into thy scabbard; rest, and be still!" 
But the answering voice seemed not less audible: 
"How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it 
a charge V" 

And the war went on, — bravely fought on both 
sides, as we all know, — until, as one of its necessi- 
ties. Slavery was abolished. It fell at last under that 
right of war to abolisli it, which the late John Quincy 
Adams had been the first to announce in the way of 
warning, niori' than twenty years before, in my own 
hearing, on the floor of Congress, while 1 was your 
Kepresentative. I remember well the burst of indig- 
nation and derision with which that warning was 
rect'ived. ISTo pri'diction of Cassandra was ever 
uioi-e scorned than his, and he did not live 
to witness its verification. But whoever else may 
have been more innncdiately and personally instru- 
mental in the liual result, — the brave soldiers who 
fought the battles, or the gallant generals who led 
them, — the devoted philanthropists, or the anient 
statesmen, who, in season and out of season, labored 
for it, — the Martyr-President who proclaimed it, — 
the ti'ue story of Emancipation can never be fairly 



JULY 4, 187fi. 89 

and fully told without the " old man eloquent," who 
died beneath the roof of the Capitol nearly thirty 
years ago, being recognized as one of the leading 
figures of the narrative. 

But, thanks be to God, who overrules every thing 
for good, that great event, the greatest of oui- Amer- 
ican Age, — great enough, alone and by itself, to give 
a name and a character to any Age, — has been 
accomplished; and, by His blessing, we present our 
country to the world this day without a slave, white 
or black, upon its soil ! Thanks be to God, not only 
that our beloved Union has been saved, but that it 
has been made both easier to save, and better worth 
saving, hereafter, by the final solution of a problem, 
before which all human wisdom had stood aghast 
and confounded for so many generations! Thanks 
be to God, and to Him be all the praise and the glory, 
we can read the great words of the Declaration, on 
this Centennial Anniversary, without reservation or 
evasion: "We hold these truths to be self-evident 
that all men are created equal, and that they are 
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness." The legend on that new 
colossal Pharos, at Long Island, may now indeed be, 
"Liberty enlightening the World! " 

We come then, to-day. Fellow Citizens, with hearts 

13 



90 ORATION. 

full of gratitude to God and man, to pass down our 
country, and its institutions, — not wliolly without 
scars and l)lomishes upon their front, — not without 
shadows on the past or clouds on the future. — but 
IVccd for ever from at least one great stain, and 
firmly rooted in the love and loyalty of a United 
People, — to the generations which are to succeed 
us. 

And what shall we say to those succeeding gener- 
ations, as we commit the sacred trust to their keeping 
and guardianship? 

If I could hope, Avithout presumption, tliat any 
hinnble counsels of mine, on this hallowed Anniver- 
sary, could be remembered beyond the hour of their 
utterance, and reach the ears of my countrymen in 
future days; if I could borrow "the masterly pen" 
of Jeflferson, and produce Avords which siiould par- 
take of the inunortality of those Avhich he Avrote on 
this little desk; if I could connnand the matchless 
tongue of John Adams, Avhen he poiu'cd out api)eals 
and arguments AA'hich uioathI men from tlu'ir seats, 
and settled the destinies of a Nation; if 1 couhl catch 
but a single spark of those electric fires Avhich Frank- 
lin wrested from the skies, and flash doAvn a phrase, 
a Avord, a thought, along the magic chords Avhich 
slrelch iid'oss the ocean of the I'nture, — what could 
1, what would I, say? 

I could not omit, certainly, to reiterate the soieuui 



JULY 4, 1876. 91 

obligations which rest on every citizen of tliis 
RepubUc to cherish and enforce the great principles 
of onr Colonial and Revolutionary Fathers, — the 
principles of Liberty and Law, one and inseparable, 
— the principles of the Constitution and the Union. 

I could not omit to urge on every man to re- 
member that self-government politically can only be 
successful, if it be accompanied by self-government 
personally; that there must be government some- 
where ; and that, if the people are indeed to be sov- 
ereigns, they must exercise their sovereignty over 
themselves individually, as well as over themselves 
in the aggregate, — regulating their own lives, resist- 
ing their own temptations, subduing their own 
passions, and voluntarily imposing upon themselves 
some measure of that restraint and discipline, which, 
under other systems, is supplied from the armories of 
arbitrary power, — the discipline of virtue, in the 
place of the discipline of slavery. 

I could not omit to caution them against the cor- 
rupting influences of intemperance, extravagance, 
and luxury. I could not omit to warn them against 
political intrigue, as well as against personal licen- 
tiousness; and to implore them to regard principle 
and character, rather than mere party allegiance, in 
the choice of men to rule over them. 

I could not omit to call upon them to foster and 
further the cause of universal Education; to give a 



92 UU.VTIOX. 

liberal support to our Schools and Colleges; to pro- 
mote the advancement of Science and of Art, in all 
their multiplied divisions and relations; and to 
encom-age and sustain all those noble institutions of 
Charity, which, in our own land above all others, 
have given the crowning grace and glory to modern 
civilization. 

I could }iot refrain from pressing upon them a just 
and generous consideration for the interests and the 
rights of their fellow-men everywhere, and an 
eai'uest elibit to promote Peace and Good Will 
among the Nations of the earth. 

I could not refrain from reminding them of the 
shame, the unspeakable shame and ignominy, which 
would attach to those who should shoAV themselves 
unable to uphold the glorious Fabric of Self-Govern- 
ment which had been founded for them at such a cost 
liy their Fathers; —" Videte, videte, ne, ut ilUs j)idch<r- 
rhnum J'uil tantam vohis hnjjerii gloriarn relinquere, 
sic vohis turjnssimum sit, illud quod accepistis, tueri 
et conservare iion jjosse!" 

And surely, most surely, I could not (ail to invoke 
them to imitate and emulate the examples of virtue 
and ])urity and patriotism, which the great founders 
ol" our Colonies and of our Nation had so abun- 
dantly left them. 

liul could 1 stop there? C'uuUl 1 hold out t(i llieni, 
as the results of a long life of observation and expe- 



JULY 4, 187G. 98 

rience, nothing but the principles and examples of 
great men? 

^^lo and Avhat are great men? '''Woe to the 
country," said Metternich to our own Ticknor, forty 
years ago, "whose condition and institutions no 
longer jDroduce great men to manage its affairs." 
The wily Austrian applied his remark to England at 
that day ; but his woe — if it be a woe — would have 
a wider range in our time, and leave hardly any land 
imreached. Certainly we hear it now-a-days, at 
every turn, that never before has there been so 
striking a disproportion between supply and de- 
mand, as at this moment, the world over, in the 
commodity of gi'eat men. 

But who, and what, are great men? "And now 
stand forth," says an eminent Swiss historian, who 
had completed a survey of the whole history of 
mankind, at the very moment when, as he says, " a 
blaze of freedom is just bursting forth beyond the 
ocean," — " And now stand forth, ye gigantic forms, 
shades of the first Chieftains, and sons of Gods, who 
glimmer among the rocky halls and mountain 
fortresses of the ancient world; and you Conquerors 
of the world from Babylon and from Macedonia; ye 
Dynasties of Caesars, of Huns, Arabs, Moguls and 
Tartars; ye Commanders of the Faithful on the 
Tigris, and Commanders of the Faithful on the 
Tiber; you hoary Counsellors of Kings, and Peers 



94 ORATION. 

of Sovereigns; Warriors on the far of trium])li, cov- 
ered with scars, and crowned with laurels; ye long 
rows of Consuls and Dictators, famed foi- yoiu- lofty 
minds, 3'our imshaken constancy', your nngovernable 
spirit; — stand forth, and let us survey for a Avhile 
your assembly, like a Council of the Gods! What 
were ye? The first among mortals? Seldom can 
you claim that title! The best of men? Still fewer 
of you have deserved such praise! Were ye the 
compellers, the instigators of the human race, the 
prime movers of all their works? Rather let us say 
that you Avere the instruments, that you Avere the 
wheels, by whose means the In\nsible Being has 
conducted the incomprehensible fabric of imiversal 
government across the ocean of lime! " 

Insti'uments and wheels of the Invisible Governor 
of the Universe! This is indeed all which the 
greatest of men ever have been, or ever can l)e. No 
flatteries of courtiers; no adulations of the multi- 
tude; no audacity of self-reliance; no intoxications 
of success; no evolutions or developments of sci- 
ence, — can make more or other of them. This is 
"the sea-mark of their utmost sail,'' — the goal of 
their farthest run, — the very round and top of their 
highest soaring. 

Oh, if there could be, to-day, a deepi-i- and more 
pervading im])ression of this great truth through- 
out our laud, and a uiore prevailing conformity 



JULY 4, 1876. 95 

of oiir thoughts and words and acts to the lessons 
which it involves, — if sve could lift ourselves to 
a loftier sense of our relations to the Invisible, — 
if, in surveying our past history, we could catch 
larger and more exalted ^dews of our destinies 
and our responsibilities, — if we could realize that 
the Avant of good men may be a heavier woe 
to a land than any want of Avhat the world calls 
great men — our Centennial Year would not only 
be signalized by splendid ceremonials and magnifi- 
cent commemorations and gorgeous expositions, but 
it would go far towards fulfilling something of 
the grandeur of that " Acceptable Year " which 
was announced by higher than human lips, and 
would be the auspicious promise and pledge of a 
glorious second century of Independence and Free- 
dom for our coimtry! 

For, if that second century of self-government is 
to go on safely to its close, or is to go on safely and 
prosperously at all, there must be some renewal of 
that old spirit of subordination and obedience to 
Divine, as well as human, Laws, which has been our 
secimty ui the past. There must be faith in some- 
thing higher and better than ourselves. There must 
be a reverent aclmowledgment of an Unseen, but 
All-seeing, All-controlling, Ruler of the Universe. 
His Word, His Day, His House, His Worship, must 
be sacred to our children, as they have been to their 



96 ORATION. 

fathers; and His l)lcssing must never fail to l)e 
invoked upon our land and upon our liberties. The 
patriot voice, which cried from tlic balcony of yonder 
Old State House, when the Declaration had been 
orig'inally pi'oelaimed, " Stability and Perpetuity to 
American Independence," did not fail to add, " God 
save our American States." I would prolong that 
ancestral prayer. And the last phrase to pass my 
lips at this hour, and to take its chance for remem- 
brance oi- oljlivion in yeai's to come, as the conclu- 
sion of this Centennial Oration, and as the sum, and 
summing u}), of all I can say to the present or the 
future, shall be : — There is, there can be, no Inde- 
jiendence of God: in Him, as a Nation, no less than 
in Him, as individuals, "we live, and movi', and have 
our being! " God save our Ajnieeican States! 



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